to build a wall between us (don't let them win)
by lisbei
Summary: When Oliver accepts R'as al Ghul's offer to become his heir, he thinks he can change the League from within, without losing himself. He is wrong. When Felicity tries to save Nyssa, she thinks she can get through to Oliver, too. She is so wrong. The brainwashing works. Oliver is gone. And al Sahim has been given an order. Olicity
1. Felicity, undone

**Note** : _Half-way through this chapter, a rape occurs. If you are triggered by reading about such a thing, perhaps the story is not for you._

* * *

Felicity should have known better. She could hear her brain saying I told you so, as she stared at the ring of assassins surrounding her. She was going to die here, all because she'd agreed to hold Lyla's guns. What had been the point? Nothing had changed, Nyssa had been taken, and people had died. For nothing.

It had just seemed like a good idea at the time. Laurel had insisted that they couldn't let Nyssa go without a fight, and arming Lyla seemed like the only solution. And then, when it all went to hell, and those assassins were lying dead on the floor, it'd been too late. She'd remembered when they'd tried to free Oliver, back in Nanda Parbat - assassins had died there too, and Malcolm Merlyn had pointed out that Oliver must have struck some sort of deal with R'as al Ghul, to prevent them from being punished. When she'd said this to Diggle, his only reply had been that every battle has collateral damage – casualties of war. She'd had a suspicion that R'as al Ghul did not see it that way, and the men surrounding her, with arrows drawn, aimed at her heart, proved her right. At least there was one consolation, that Oliver wasn't here.

The second she thought that, Oliver strolled to the forefront, proving to her once and for all that the universe was laughing at her. She wanted to cry, she wanted to plead for her life, but she did neither of those things. She just stood like a rabbit mesmerised by a snake as one man tied her wrists while Oliver dropped a hood over her head. The last glimpse she had was of Oliver's eyes – no, of al Sahim's eyes - and she was surprised that they seemed sad.

Lying on the floor of some kind of van, she had time to bitterly regret her actions. She was angry that she still had hope of surviving, but she guessed that was inevitable – we always think we can get out of this one, right? When do we ever accept it's the end? Even now, when no-one knew where she was, no-one was coming to rescue her, she still had hope that she could get through to Oliver, somehow. But she had seen his face, and there was no Oliver there. That man was a stranger to her.

She was dragged into a building, and eventually to what seemed like an open space, and forced to her knees, the hood pulled off her head. She looked around her – there were torches everywhere, except at the end of what seemed like a long hall, where the shadows hid people. The two men on each side of her kept her down with a hand on each shoulder.

Footsteps brought her head up again. Oliver was approaching from the shadows, and as she watched, he motioned the men holding her down to move away, and drew his sword.

"You have caused the deaths of many of my brothers. The sentence for that crime is death." His voice was cold. Almost too cold, like he was trying to prove something to himself.

"Don't I even get a trial?"

Her voice broke at the end, and her eyes filled with tears. Damn, and there I was trying to keep things light, she thought. But I don't want to die, her mind wailed. I'm not ready, she wanted to plead.

"Will it make any difference if I beg?" she asked.

Oliver shook his head. He didn't speak. In the flickering torchlight it was hard to see his expression, but to her astonishment, his eyes slid to the side, as if pointing out the other assassins standing behind him. What was he trying to tell her? Was there some way out of this? Why couldn't he just say something? She was still trying to figure it out when she realised her time had run out.

Oliver tightened his hands about the hilt of his sword, and brought it up for a killing swing, and Felicity quickly closed her eyes. At this moment, which she was certain would be her last, her senses were cruelly heightened. She felt the tears trickling from the corners of her eyes, the heat from the torches on her face, the cold of the stone floor seeping into her knees, and hoped it would be quick. A few seconds passed like centuries. It should have happened by now, right? She kept her eyes closed, her heartbeat thundering in her ears, until a clatter in front of her made her jump. She opened her eyes to see the sword on the ground in front of her, and Oliver standing there, frozen, staring at her, his hands clenched at his sides. But it really wasn't Oliver – there was no recognition in his eyes, no sudden dawning realization that it was her, Felicity Smoak, the woman he loved. It was still Sahim. But a Sahim who couldn't kill her? What did it mean?

R'as al Ghul appeared out of the darkness, and she shrank back. She guessed he wouldn't have any problem doing the executing himself, unless-

"You allowed her to avoid the search, my son. You are the one who must execute her." R'as al Ghul's tone seemed stern but fair, even as he signed her death warrant.

Oliver answered, still with his eyes fixed on Felicity as she knelt, trying not to shake.

"I find myself . . . unable to harm her."

"Is it a lingering affection from your time as Oliver Queen?"

R'as al Ghul sounded like he was discussing an interesting insect.

Was it that? Could there be something of Oliver left in him? She realised that Sahim was looking at her, and she opened her mouth to plead her case, but he shook her off with an almost imperceptible movement. His next words dashed her hopes.

"No. Oliver Queen is of the past."

Sahim paused, clearly reluctant to continue.

"But she is . . . fierce. And beautiful."

What? Felicity wanted to scream. What? Sahim had taken a shine to her? They'd only met once! And it could hardly be called meeting; she had glared at him, and pleaded, and there'd been nothing to indicate any kind of feelings for her. Maybe he was fooling himself, and there was still a bit of Oliver left there.

"I cannot have her blood on my hands," he continued, while Felicity screamed inwardly – don't say that, idiot! What if R'as al Ghul makes an exception and kills me for you? But R'as al Ghul had other ideas.

"Has she asked for the other punishment? "

Oliver shook his head. "No, master."

R'as al Ghul nodded, as if to confirm what he'd already known.

"She does not know our ways."

Felicity couldn't stop herself, and burst out with, "What do you mean, other punishment? And can I ask for it _now_?"

The two men looked at her like they'd forgotten she was there – maybe she should have left it that way.

Oliver answered her, sounding like he was parroting the party line, something that had been drummed into him.

"It is worse than death. You will be dishonoured."

The hell? Why couldn't they say what they mean, what was worse than- oh, shit.

"You're going to make him rape me? You –"

Oliver descended on her to clap a hand over her mouth, while R'as al Ghul watched her with a kind of detached amusement.

"Do not try my lord's patience," Oliver said sternly. His tone seemed to say that he might like her, but not enough to forgive her insulting his new daddy. Ew. That sounded wrong.

R'as al Ghul had had enough, it seemed.

"Sahim, she will be given the choice, and you will abide by it, disregarding your obvious affection for this woman. Remember, you must remove all attachments, if you are to become Heir to the Demon."

Oliver nodded, and they both looked at her.

"Speak," Oliver said. "Make your choice."

There was no choice, really. She didn't want to die. And she'd get over it. Wouldn't she? Ordinarily she'd say she'd never get over Oliver raping her, but this wasn't Oliver. She had to keep telling herself this. She could deal with anything, as long as she was alive to deal with it. She had to believe that. Life meant hope.

"I choose rape," she whispered, feeling terrified and ridiculous at the same time. The whole situation was surreal, and she tried to retrace her steps – how the hell did she get here? How had her life become this? Would it happen here, on the floor, while R'as watched? She didn't think she'd survive that with her sanity intact. R'as nodded, satisfied, and walked away, and Oliver grabbed her arm and lifted her off her knees. She staggered, unable to stop shaking, her heart hammering in her chest.

She started sobbing, taking deep gulping breaths. She was going to live! She just had to endure this – this whatever it was. And then she looked at Oliver, who was dragging her along, stone-faced, and shuddered. She was going to live. That was all that mattered. Just before they reached the group of assassins at the end of the corridor he murmured something in her ear, and then he pushed her towards them.

She didn't hear what he said to them, because his words to her kept floating in her head: "Tomorrow. Midnight. If you speak to anyone about this, I will cut your throat." So, that was it then. There was no Oliver, not any more. This was the proof she'd needed. Good job, Felicity.

She spent the whole of the next day in a daze, doing things on autopilot. Even when she joined Diggle and Laurel on the computers, she barely said a word, except to explain that she had to leave earlier than usual. They both looked at her like they expected more, some kind of rambling explanation which would make them smile. Felicity Smoak, comic relief, at your service. Well, sorry friends, but I'm all out of quippy banter for the foreseeable future. Try again on the first of never. Maybe she should tell them she had to leave early, because the shell of the man she loved was coming over to rape her at the order of the Dark Lord Sauron. At that point she had to rush into the ladies' room to stuff her fist in her mouth, to stop herself from screaming.

At midnight she was sitting on her bed, wearing only a t-shirt, with her arms around her knees. Her brain was just coming up with a nasty jibe about how that wouldn't stop anyone, when she realised that Oliver was in the room with her. No, it _wasn't_. It wasn't Oliver. She had to stop that. Just looking at him with all his assassin gear on made her stomach lurch and she started shaking. Her terror must have been obvious in her expression, because he pulled off his cowl and mask, and sat next to her.

Felicity could never remember what she'd said to him then – she knew that she babbled something about having to fight him, to resist, and she remembered her surprise when he nodded, taking her seriously. When he told her she couldn't scream, and why, she shuddered. She had nothing else to say, so he got up, and switched the light off. There was a rustling sound which she at first thought was him taking his clothes off, but then she heard the arrows click together as he put his quiver down, and she wasn't sure anymore. Then he got on the bed, and started to push her down on her back. It was too much, she couldn't just lie there and take it. She jumped as if galvanized, and tried to fight him off – but just as she'd thought, he only needed a few seconds to immobilize her completely. He used his bulk to keep her down and forced his hand between her legs. She kept struggling, and started to sob, trying to scratch his face, go for his eyes.

"If you make believe that I am your lover, it will go easier for you."

The strained whisper in her ear took her by surprise. Did he seriously think she could do that? After he'd made it so clear that he wasn't, as he put it, her lover? He took advantage of her surprise to pin her arms down, and she gave up. This was happening, whether she wanted it or not. Which was kind of the point. He pushed her legs apart with his knees, lowering himself on top of her, and when he slid inside her she went limp.

She was tired of fighting. Her life had turned into some kind of nightmare, and she wanted to rush through this part. The sooner he does this, the sooner it's over and he's out of your life, for good, she thought. He moved inside her, and it must have lasted longer than she thought, but after what felt like a few seconds he pulled out. Her head felt like it was stuffed with cotton wool. The only thing seeping through was a sense of disbelief, and bone-deep exhaustion. Was that it? She lay as he'd left her, legs spread, her limbs feeling too heavy to move. It was over, right? This was her, punished. But why wasn't he leaving?

In the diffuse light from the window she saw that he was sitting on the bed, head in his hands, and wasn't moving. She felt sorry for him for a second, then raged at herself – she was the victim here. He could have said, fuck you, R'as al Ghul. Just as she was about to ask if he'd finished his pity party for one, he got up and started looking for his weapons. He strapped his quiver to his back, and looked at his bow, considering it, before attaching that behind him too. Finally, he produced a sharp knife and slid it carefully into his sleeve, hilt-first. The old Felicity would have driven herself crazy wondering what he was doing, who he was expecting. New and improved Felicity didn't care much. She just wanted him to leave.

He switched on the main light and strode back to the bed, pulling her up on her knees.

"What? What are you doing?" she protested. They'd promised, her mind wailed irrationally. It was over, it had to be over, she couldn't take any more of this.

"Quiet," he hissed, as he grabbed one of those intricate scarves assassins loved, and used it to tie her arms together, wrist to elbow. He lifted her chin and looked her in the eyes, saying, "I'm truly sorry for this." Then, before she could even wonder what he meant, he backhanded her with such force as to topple her on her side. Her ears were ringing with the force of the blow so she couldn't even shrink back in fear as he tore the neck of her t-shirt to her waist, exposing her breasts. She could see him through her tears, staring at her as though there was something he'd missed. She realised what he was doing when the door to her bedroom opened, and another two assassins seemed to appear in her room.

"Is it done?"

She didn't recognize the assassin's voice, so it wasn't Maseo – no wonder Sahim had been so panicky. Probably these guys weren't exactly impressed by their master's new heir, especially as he'd already gotten a number of them killed. She shook as she felt their stares on her skin, and wondered if this was enough, if it was over, or if this was just the beginning. But there was a soft sound and they were gone. She looked up at Sahim and just caught him at the tail end of what, in another man, would have been a sigh of relief. She shrank back as she saw the wickedly sharp knife in his hand, but he just swept it over the scarf tying her arms together, so that her hands were free. The knife disappeared and he put on his cowl and mask and stared at her for several years, it seemed, until he too vanished into the night.

Felicity wanted to scream and tear at her hair, but that seemed like too much effort. She lay there and considered just going to sleep, but when she closed her eyes all she saw was his face and all she felt was his body, pressing her down into the mattress. A sudden wave of nausea washed over her, and she barely made it to the bathroom before she threw up all that she had eaten the previous evening. And she hadn't even eaten anything. Wow, coffee does _not_ taste as good coming back up again. She spat and went to rinse out her mouth, and caught a glimpse of her face in the mirror. One side was steadily reddening, and she looked in her mirror cabinet for some witch-hazel, then thought better of it and decided she'd use ice instead. If she had it. She remembered waving a bag of frozen peas at Diggle a few days ago. It seemed like another lifetime, and she had to hold back the sobs. Out of the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of an old pregnancy test, and snorted. Sahim hadn't even thought to use a condom – guess the League didn't go in for contraception. Good thing she'd had the shot, then.

She decided to look for the ice anyway, maybe there was some hidden away, and froze in shock in front of her freezer. There were five new ice-packs in her freezer which she hadn't put there. As she staggered towards the kitchen counter she noticed there was something there too - a pile of strange looking herbs and some liquid in a small bottle with a stopper. And a note – it was in Oliver's handwriting, but it seemed neater, somehow. It listed instructions to make a 'poultice', whatever that was, and press it on her face, which should help with the bruising. She stared at it for a few seconds and burst out laughing. She laughed till her sides ached, and the tears came out of her eyes, until she realised that she was crying, and had been for some time. She came to, sitting on the floor of her kitchen, her arms around her knees, staring at the underside of her kitchen table. There were some serious spider webs there. And the dust was . . . well, it was winning. That was unacceptable.

A few hours later, Felicity was scrubbing her bedroom floor on her hands and knees as the sun came up, and she realised that she was still only wearing the half-torn t-shirt she'd put on that evening. She pulled it off in disgust, her stomach rebelling again, except she'd already thrown everything up. She absolutely needed a shower, and afterwards was proud of herself for not crying in the shower or scrubbing herself raw, or anything like that. She put on some loose work-out clothes, and called in sick to work. As soon as she hung up, her phone rang. Diggle. She decided there and then that she wouldn't tell him. She knew he'd believe her, after Lyla's kidnapping. The problem was that he would believe her, and he'd go after Oliver- after Sahim, and get himself killed. She'd have to make some excuse, and she was so tired. She didn't know if it was the shock, or the fact that she'd just cleaned her whole apartment, but she felt like she could sleep for a week.

"Hi, Diggle," she said, trying to find a balance between normal Felicity and sad about Oliver Felicity, without sounding too happy. Acting was hard, especially when she felt so numb.

"Hey, Felicity," he answered. "Everything ok after last night?"

What did he mean, last night? What did he know? What _could_ he know? She hadn't said anything. Oh. Mind games. He was just fishing. Being married to a covert agent was really rubbing off on him, she thought. Maybe she should make something up. Cramps, her mind suggested nastily. He won't want to know more. But this was Diggle, her friend. She decided to go for the partial truth.

"John, I need a few days, a week, maybe. All this with Oliver, I just can't handle it right now."

Her voice cracked on Oliver's name. Had she given herself away? She was terrified for a second, until she remembered she was supposed to be in love with him. That thought was so ridiculous she was about to burst into hysterical laughter again, but restrained herself with an effort.

"I understand." Diggle sounded like he wanted to argue, but then he didn't. "So, I'll see you in a week, yeah?"

"Yes," she answered. Maybe in a week she'd be able to face Diggle and Thea without crying. And Laurel, oh lord.

She just needed to talk to someone, but who? Diggle and Thea were out of the question. Laurel would go after Oliver and get her ass killed even quicker than Diggle. She needed someone who wouldn't have _emotions_ at her, who wouldn't expect her to explain to them why it happened, how she let it happen, how it wasn't Oliver's fault, and so on and so on and- why was her face so wet? Oh. She was crying again. And then her stomach rumbled, loudly. She didn't know whether to laugh or scream. Why was her life such a joke? Why couldn't she just die of a broken heart, or violated honour, or whatever, why must her stupid body force her to go on? Oh, stop being a drama queen, she told herself.

And she marched into her kitchen, determined to fix this, somehow. She swept Sahim's herbs into the garbage (they were the league of _assassins_ , not the league of apothecaries, as far as she knew), but used one of the icepacks on her throbbing face. She fixed herself a huge breakfast, and ate it all, telling herself that she wasn't some consumptive Victorian heroine, she wasn't a _victim_ , she wouldn't lie down and die from this. No way. She was more than just her body, and she was going to get over this. And if her soul was a little bruised, well, she'd get over that too. She'd find a way to talk to someone about this, because she wasn't going to let it beat her.

The next morning, after a night during which she found it so impossible to fall asleep in her bed that she ended up on the couch with a firm resolution to find a new flat as soon as humanly possible, she wandered around the shopping district, with a clear image of what she wanted, but not where she could get it. A few seconds of research set her on the right track, and soon she was standing in front of her destination. Gun Depot. Seemed pretty straightforward. So why couldn't she go in? Maybe it was the irony of it all – she, who'd marched to oppose the NRA, to repeal the Second Amendment, _she_ wanted to buy a gun. She'd been ok with holding the guns for Lyla, hadn't she, her brain reminded her. Sometimes she wished her brain would shut up. She steeled herself and went in, and the whole transaction was surprisingly easy. The guy behind the counter asked her if she knew what she wanted, and all that came to mind was Diggle's beloved Glock. And that was it – within a few seconds the box containing the gun in it was in front of her, as well as a box of bullets. The man noticed her hesitation.

"You ever used a gun before?"

She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak.

"There's an indoor shooting range out in the North District, and I know a guy who's giving classes specifically aimed at women. He's ex-Marines, and used to be an instructor with the FBI. Goddam card, I have it somewhere," he muttered, rummaging under his counter. He pressed it into her trembling fingers and she thanked him, stuffing it into her purse. She grabbed the bag he'd given her and was almost at the door when he called her back. This is it, she thought. I knew it wasn't that easy.

"Just remember, lady. You can't keep it in your purse unless you have a permit to carry – you can apply for it but it's not that easy to get."

Oh. Felicity knew that, but it hadn't really hit her until now. Still, she was already regretting her decision, and was fully intending to stuff the gun somewhere in her closet as soon as she got home. Though she looked at the card he'd given her, and wondered. She had the gun now, might as well learn how to use it. Why hadn't any of her friends ever taught her how to use a gun? Why hadn't she continued fighting lessons with Diggle? Had it all just been because she felt threatened by Sara?

She stuffed the card in her purse and walked to the parking garage where she'd left her car, determined to keep her momentum going. She'd had a plan. She made a list, even. First gun, then support groups. Laurel had let slip in a conversation that sometimes the only thing that kept her from crawling back into a bottle was the AA meetings she attended – Felicity would do that. Whether it would be enough to help her get over this was another story. She couldn't really figure it out right now. She was wary about one-on-one therapy, for the simple reason that giving a cover story to a support group was one thing; it would be so much harder to lie convincingly to a trained therapist. She sat in her car for a while, thinking about the various options, until she realized she'd been there for an hour. She really didn't want to go home and spend another sleepless night on her couch, but the sooner she got there, the sooner she could start looking for a new apartment. One step at a time, Felicity, she told herself. One step at a time.

The next two months passed in a blur, and sometimes when she looked back, it seemed like she was just sleepwalking through her days. She'd consciously known that R'as al Ghul was still at large, and that Oliver was now his heir, but she had thought that it was over, at least as far as Starling City was concerned. So the phone call from Malcolm Merlyn, of all people, was bad enough. Telling her that he needed a way to destroy a super-virus, and that oh, by the way, Al Sahim was on their side now, was such a shock she was speechless for a few seconds. She had to bite her tongue not to scream at him, not to ask how he couldn't have rebelled _before_ he raped her, rather than after. She controlled herself with an effort. She was sure that Merlyn heard the strain in her voice, but he chose not to comment, only relayed her demands to . . . him. She hacked into the security of the laboratory she directed him to, gave him the code, and Diggle called ARGUS, who'd be waiting for Sahim as he came out of the lab. Thea and Diggle raced off, worried that something would go wrong, but Felicity managed to stay behind, saying something about making sure the other assassins were dealt with. Thea was too happy about seeing her brother again to notice, but Diggle gave her an oblique, "you and I are going to have ourselves a conversation, girl" look before he left. Felicity laughed, bitterly. Like she was going to let anything slip, with Diggle of all people. The various support groups she was going to were dealing with her impulse to talk about what had happened to her – although she'd had to dress it up as a date rape, bringing it out into the open helped. But Diggle and Thea must never know what had happened.

When they came back, Thea was visibly shaken. And Diggle looked tired. He went to get some cocoa for Thea and coffee for himself, and Felicity went to give him a hand, curious in spite of herself.

"You look like the cop at the end of the movie who turns in his gun and badge," she quipped, trying to regain the easy camaraderie they'd had before the league of assassins shitstorm that fucked up their lives. Diggle sighed, and smiled at her.

"I feel like that guy," he answered.

"Now, if only I had a gun and badge to slam on a desk. I'd need a desk, too."

His eyes fell on the bottle of vodka they'd rescued from the Foundry, and he winced. She remembered how he and Oliver used to drink it after a case, and wished she'd put it away. He responded to her enquiring look.

"Ever heard of suicide by cop?"

At her indrawn breath, he reassured her quickly.

"He wanted to, but Thea talked him out of it. At least I think it was what Thea said that stopped him. Not like he spoke to us. I mean, Oliver never talked much. But this Al Sahim guy talks even less."

"You talk about Oliver like he's dead," she said, thoughtfully. She was proud of herself that her voice didn't crack on his name. But she must have let something else slip, because when she looked up, Diggle was staring at her.

"You're . . . angry. That's it, right? You haven't been talking lately, not like you. Because you don't want to show us how angry you are."

Moment of clarity, she thought. It hit her, like one of those anvils in old cartoons, or a grand piano. She felt it, the rage, under her skin, threatening to explode, and God help anyone who stood in the way. Critical mass, was that what they called it? That was what she felt like, all the time. But she had to push it down, as deep as possible. Even talking about it with Diggle was dangerous.

"Aren't you?" she countered. Diggle gave her a knowing look.

"Felicity . . ."

"No, John. No. I can't . . . talk. Please, don't make me."

Diggle sighed.

"Yeah, I guess I'm angry, too."

Felicity waited, but Diggle didn't seem to want to say more, so she continued.

"What's going to happen to him, now?"

"ARGUS said they have a therapist who's been successful with deprogramming and exit counselling for cult members. And Waller promised me that if they can get him back, he won't be going to prison. As a kind of thank you for destroying the Alpha/Omega virus. All is forgiven."

Diggle sounded like he didn't believe a word of it. Felicity couldn't believe it, either. But who knew what went on in Waller's sociopathic mind – while most people in her position planned four moves ahead, she probably planned fifteen. Most likely she had some use for Oliver once he was himself again.

It didn't take long for the message to come from ARGUS – they'd had a breakthrough, and Oliver, well. He was Oliver. Or so they said. In the meantime, Nyssa had contacted Laurel with the news that she'd managed to kill her father, and that he would no longer be a threat to Starling City. She stared at the monitor for a while, looking at the emails. Their lives were so bizarre, she thought. She leaned back in her chair, trying to stretch, and caught a glimpse of the papers Ray had tricked her into signing before he left, and groaned. Another thing she had to handle. What had Ray been thinking? It was bad enough when everyone thought she'd gotten her previous job on her back, and Oliver had just made her his executive assistant, he hadn't given her the fracking company. Go on, Felicity, she thought bitterly. You can say 'fucking'. Because it was fucked up. God knows what everyone would think she'd done to get the company, some fifty shades of perverted shit. She'd already scheduled a meeting with Walter to advise her on a CEO who'd do a good job without trying to take over, and she'd made sure no-one knew that the ownership of the company had changed. What she really wanted to do was just give the company to Thea, but Ray had messed with that too – if she tried to transfer ownership, the company would revert back to him. So she had to deal, but she wasn't going to spend the rest of her life known as the woman who'd slept her way to the top. She _wasn't_.

A week later, Felicity managed to sit through the entire video Oliver left for them without once looking closely at the screen. Thea and Diggle studied it carefully, but she managed to look past it, without focussing on the image. But she couldn't stop up her ears, so she had to listen to his hesitant voice, talking about needing some time alone, on Lian Yu, to come to terms with what he'd done. His voice seemed to drown out everything else, even though she caught Thea asking a question, and Digg answering her. But she blocked it out, and tried to analyse what he sounded like. Was he really Oliver again? Or was this just a trick? He sounded like himself, but contrite. She noticed that he never once asked for forgiveness. Maybe he thought that he didn't deserve it. Maybe he was right. She felt sorry for Thea – her brother was the only family she had left, if you didn't count her father the sociopath, and she certainly didn't. But Oliver didn't sound like he'd be coming back to them anytime soon. Never, if she had anything to say about it.

And that was why she couldn't understand how, a month later, she was on a helicopter headed to Lian Yu, on a mission to get him back. Ok, so she understood _how_ , she didn't really understand why. How could she have let herself be talked into this? Didn't they know how dangerous she was to Oliver right now? Well, no, they couldn't know, because she hadn't told them. Secrets and lies, right? Wasn't that their way? What did they call this in the army, situation normal, all fucked up? It sure was.

"Felicity, the helicopter's going to land for a few minutes, and then you can jump out," Diggle yelled into her headphones. "Are you still ok with this?"

She nodded, not wanting to speak, and especially not wanting to yell over the sounds of the blades. Hadn't they gone over this and over this, until she wanted to scream at them to just shut up. She was going to the island, but not for the reason they thought. She fingered the strap on her back pack nervously as she thought of what she had inside it, and whether she could go through with it. She'd soon find out.

The sun was setting as the helicopter started circling Lian Yu, and Felicity was glad that it meant the helicopter couldn't stay any longer. Diggle looked worried, but she reassured him.

"It'll be alright", she yelled. "He'll hear the helicopter and come to the beach!"

Diggle nodded, and the few minutes were a rush of movement, as they landed and she jumped out. A rush of noise and wind and she was alone on the rocky beach, and it was getting dark. Should she start a fire? Did she even know how? The momentum that had kept her going this far stopped, and she sat down abruptly. She felt drained, empty almost. She decided to just sit for a while, drinking in the quiet, so different from the buzzing energy of the city.

A twig breaking to her left made her look up, and there he was. Oliver looked the same as ever – even his hair had grown back from the harsh buzz-cut the Assassins had given him, and he reminded her of the first time she'd come here to get him back. It seemed like a lifetime ago. The only difference was that he was wearing a shirt this time – was it for her benefit?

"Felicity."

He even sounded the same as ever. This wasn't Sahim, who hadn't ever used her name, she thought.

"Oliver."

Wow, she was just full of clever talk today. Was that what she'd come here for, to just say his name at him? She shivered suddenly, and it seemed to break the spell.

"I'll make a fire," he said, and started gathering twigs and dried seaweed.

He piled everything up pretty quick, and just as she thought he was going to start rubbing sticks together, he produced an old-fashioned lighter and started the fire. He noticed her look and seemed to want to justify himself.

"It takes too long the other way."

"I'm not here to talk about scouting techniques, Oliver, " she said impatiently.

She couldn't just sit here and make small talk with Oliver. He nodded, abashed, but didn't add anything to her statement. He seemed to be waiting for her to say something, to address the elephant in the room, as it were, but now she was actually face to face with him, she didn't even know how to start. The silence between them stretched out, past awkward and uncomfortable, and into peaceful, so that she started when he broke it.

"I left a video," he offered. "I wanted to explain."

He opened his mouth to say more, but it seemed he'd run out of steam.

"Yes, Thea and Diggle showed it to me. They asked me to come here and get you back."

He was staring at her face with such intensity that she had to look away. She couldn't meet his eyes. After a few seconds he seemed satisfied – she saw him nod, out of the corner of her eye. She looked straight at him and he was smiling at her, not openly, just a small relieved half-smile, the kind that used to make her melt in the old days.

"But you didn't come here to take me back," he said.

"No," she answered, as she got up and, opening her backpack, pulled the gun out. Just as she'd been taught: safety off, rack the slide, gun in one hand, other hand supporting it, use the sight, point it at the target. At Oliver.

"I came here to kill you."


	2. Oliver, or the man with two names

_Oliver Queen is of the past. He is forgotten. I am al Sahim._

When he saw the woman in the strange deserted warehouse defying Sarab, refusing the search, it was as though the world slowed down and simultaneously caught fire. She seemed to glow against her drab surroundings, and if he didn't know better, he would have said that the ghost of Oliver Queen was controlling his actions. But he _did_ know better. There was no Oliver Queen. It was Sahim's error that caused the death of his brothers, and he would have to dole out the punishment, to this woman, who he'd just realised he loved beyond all reason. Was it possible to fall in love at first sight? He would not have thought so, before that night.

"You are new to our ways, Sahim," R'as al Ghul said, as he and his brothers prepared to bring the woman to their hiding place. "You must be asking yourself why she is the one that must be punished, when the other discharged the weapons."

"I would not presume to question our traditions, Master," Sahim answered, though in truth he could not stop his inner protests, that his brave phoenix must take the place of another, the true guilty party.

"Lyla Michaels is a mother, Sahim." R'as Al Ghul sounded almost indulgent as he continued. "In truth, your error was in abducting her in the first place, but you were not to know."

Sahim seemed to remember that the Daughter of the Demon had herself abducted a mother in her quest to retrieve Taer as Safer, her Beloved, but he felt strangely reticent at mentioning this to his master. It was the first doubt he had felt ever since he was reborn into this new life, and though he felt its pressure, he was able to sweep it aside.

"There is an alternative to death, for a woman, Sahim."

"I have been told this, master. But the woman must ask for the choice – I may not reveal it to her."

He tried to keep the inquiry out of his voice as he spoke, and R'as al Ghul showed no sign of having heard anything. Or he chose to ignore it.

"If she cannot ask, then you must give her death, my son."

His tone indicating that the conversation was over, he walked away, leaving Sahim with the bitter knowledge that he _could_ save her, if only she could read his mind.

As she knelt at his feet, later that night, trying to be brave, trying to guess what he wanted so badly to tell her, Sahim felt despair wash over him. It was hopeless. Each man kills the thing he loves, he thought. He paused for a moment to wonder where the strange thought had come from, but it changed nothing. He tightened his hands on his sword and brought it up for the killing stroke, and when she saw, she closed her eyes. And he froze. He could not, _would_ not do this thing. He threw the sword down, startling her, and in her eyes he saw her surprise to still be alive. Minutes later he saw that surprise turn to rage when she understood what she would have to do to survive, and he found himself covering her mouth to stop her from sealing her fate in anger – all leniency would be suspended if she gave great insult to the Demon's Head. He could feel the contempt emanating from his master when she made her choice, and this was the second time he doubted his lord. Sahim himself felt no contempt for someone who would choose life over death. He had seen death, had caused it many times, and there was no nobility in it. He would have been happier if he hadn't known that even though her life would be spared, her body would not, and from that day onwards, she would hate him for the rest of her life, even as he would love her for the rest of his. He tried to speak harshly to her as he dragged her out of R'as al Ghul's presence, but wasn't sure who he was trying to convince – whether it was her, his lord, or himself.

Or the others. He felt eyes upon him constantly, watching his actions, his behaviour, waiting for him to make a false step. Not everyone in the League believed he was truly one of them, and if he fell, then it stood to reason they would do what he could not. Even his hesitation to kill her, his failure to have her searched, had already raised suspicions among his brothers. He could not be sure that they really believed he would go through with it, and for all of the next day, he lived in terror of being summoned to find her lifeless body, to find that his brothers had exacted their vengeance in his place.

At midnight on the next day, Sahim entered her bedroom without making a sound. She was sitting on her bed and shrank back when she became aware of his presence. He could see dread in her face, and he took off the mask and the cowl, in an attempt to reassure her, and sat down next to her. She was shaking, and would not meet his eyes.

"I need . . . I need to . . ." Her voice was shaking as badly as the rest of her, and his admiration for her only increased as she forced her body to obey her.

"I won't just lie there and let you do this," she continued, and her voice was stronger now. He nodded, even as he felt his heart break.

"Well? Aren't you going to say anything?" She seemed impatient now, to get it over with.

"You may resist me," he said, watching her closely.

"But I cannot let you speak, or scream."

She opened her mouth to argue the point, and he went to whisper in her ear, moving so quickly that she gasped in shock.

"There are others here," he murmured. "It would be unwise to draw their attention before it is done."

Her eyes widened, and she seemed to understand. It was time. He got up to turn off the lights, and got on the bed again, this time to push her down. He tried to follow his own advice to her, to pretend she was willing, but found himself unable to maintain his arousal when she went limp under him, her eyes staring at nothing as she waited for him to finish.

Afterwards, he sat with his head in his hands, unable to stir. She had not moved from where he had left her, and he wished he could comfort her in some way. Instead, he had to make things worse. What he had done was not enough to persuade his brothers that she had been violated. So, with every action he cemented her hatred for him. He bound her arms, hit her in the face, tore her clothing. With each action he felt he debased himself further, while raising her esteem in his eyes. She bore his inflicted indignities with such grace and fortitude. When his brothers raked her form with their eyes he wanted to kill them, and knew he would, eventually. And this was the third time he doubted his master.

Back in Nanda Parbat, when R'as al Ghul told him he was to marry his daughter, Sahim doubted his lord for a fourth time. He knew very well that Nyssa, Daughter of the Demon, was not interested in the love of men. Why would he force this unwilling union on his child? When he heard talk of children, Sahim felt a strange blurring in his head – even though he was an assassin now, Heir to the Demon, he knew what century they were living in, and that women could conceive without a man, and could marry other women. He opened his mouth to raise the issue with his lord, and closed it again. He had happened to catch Nyssa's eye, and along with the horror and disgust, he had glimpsed terror – if she, the beloved daughter, dared not speak, who was he to do so?

When finally he was told of the Alpha/Omega virus, and his part in bringing the city to destruction, his final doubt in R'as al Ghul shattered the calm which had smothered his actions and thoughts ever since his induction into the league. He was careful to show nothing on his face. But he would _not_ do this thing. Where was the honour in the death of innocents? How could Al Saher be accused of breaking the code when he caused the death of hundreds, when he, Sahim, was being sent to kill even more people? Why had he let the woman live, if he was only going to bring her a slower and more painful death?

Sahim nodded and smiled, pretending to agree to everything that was asked of him, and prepared to leave for Starling City on his mission of death. He knew that before he left he would have to convince Nyssa to deal with her father, because he could not. He wavered daily between his image of R'as al Ghul as his beloved master, his father, and the reality of a man who craved power and condoned rape and mass murder. Even though he would have denied it to anyone who asked, he was starting to feel as though he had no control over his actions, at least those related to his lord. The sole thought of causing harm to R'as al Ghul gave him physical pain, and a wave of dizziness and nausea that threatened to expose his true feelings. He had never felt so out of control of his actions, even when he had been dosed with Vertigo. And that thought alone troubled him. Because Al Sahim had never been dosed with Vertigo.

At their last meal together, Sahim waited for the right moment to speak to the man who considered himself his father-in-law.

"I wish to spend some time with my wife before I leave, my lord."

R'as al Ghul's face was immediately wreathed in smiles, just as Nyssa glared at him. He tried to signal her with his eyes, but she refused to meet them. Still, he could talk with her once they were alone – they would surely be left alone to consummate their union, wouldn't they?

Nyssa walked into the room before him, and as soon as he turned to shut the door, she attacked. She'd gotten another knife from somewhere, but he managed to fight her off easily, and soon had her pinned down on their bed. That in itself was surprising. Added to his own inability to think as clearly as he liked, it was downright suspicious. She struggled some more, trying to kick him in the groin, and he wanted to tell her not to worry, he doubted he'd feel arousal ever again, not after what he'd inflicted on the one shining star in this universe of dung. There – his mind had wandered again.

"Enough," he hissed into her ear. "I needed to speak in private, and thought to use this as an excuse."

"Excuse?" she spat at him.

"You need no excuse! I know what you did to poor Felicity," she raged. "I should kill you for that alone."

"You will not speak her name ever again." His fury was as incandescent as his words were cold. "It was your foolhardy plan that brought this upon her."

She was taken aback, and looked at him closely.

"She is still your Beloved. But you are not Oliver Queen."

"I am al Sahim, as you well know," he said tiredly.

How often would he have to repeat this? But she was right, the woman, whose given name he was not fit to pronounce, was his Beloved, his Ankaa, his phoenix.

"You must listen to me-"

She interrupted him again.

"If you do not intend to take me by force, you must at least pretend to do so!"

"Are we being watched?"

He could hardly believe this. Where was the great honour of the assassins he had been told about so often? Since when was it honourable to peep at keyholes?

"Of course we are being watched, you dolt," she whispered.

"It will not surprise my single-minded father if I let myself be mastered by such a strong man," she continued, her words dripping with sarcasm.

"But if I feel your manhood stirring, I will geld you," she warned.

He rolled his eyes, just as she pretended to give in. They did some actions with a view of fooling the person watching, glad that with their layers of robes and all the hangings in the way, they only had to move rhythmically for a while, though their conversation would have immediately dispelled this charade.

"I think we are being drugged," he whispered, as he pretended to thrust.

"Do you not find yourself losing fights too easily?"

She thought about this, in between feigned gasps and theatrically angry insults.

"You bested me on the rooftop in Starling City," she countered.

"As you told me, that was the place where your Beloved died," he answered. She nodded, her eyes saddened.

"You _must_ find out what is affecting you, and remove it. And," he said, speeding up his movements, "you must kill your father." He finished off with a long groan, hoping to convince their watchers of his passion.

"Don't you think I've tried," she hissed angrily.

"A frontal attack on the Demon's Head?" he countered.

"Now who's the dolt? That is not how you defeat him. The knife in the back, poison in the cup, trap him far from the pit; have you no guile?"

She opened her mouth to answer him, the fury clear in her face, then seemed to change her mind.

"I have had these thoughts," she said slowly. "Though only in Starling City." Her expression changed, and her voice suddenly increased in volume.

"You got what you wanted, you pig! Now get off me!"

She pushed him off her violently, and it was not a moment too soon, as R'as al Ghul burst into the room. Nyssa made a show of pulling her skirts down and glaring at her father, and Sahim pretended to adjust his trousers. Any father would have killed him for his offence, even the fathers of Starling City, soft and unused to violence. R'as al Ghul simply clapped him on the shoulder.

"Well done, my son. Now it is time to bring death to the city."

Sahim had never hated anyone more than he hated R'as al Ghul at that moment. And yet, he could not kill him. Why could he not? There was the problem of the assassins, of course, and Sarab, ever watchful. But he thought he could take Sarab, and he was the heir – the other assassins would treat it like an early ascension, and would accept him. But there was more to it than that. Even the thought of running his lord through made bile rise in his throat. He needed to get out of Nanda Parbat. Perhaps in the city he would be able to think more clearly.

He walked out without a backward glance, one thought floating around in his head: Nyssa would have to . . . step up her game. He paused, walking up to the plane. Whose phrase was that? What did it mean? He shook off the stray thought and climbed up into the cockpit. Now was not the time for the ghosts of his past life to distract him. He would have to keep his wits about him if he wanted to prevent the death of millions of innocents.

On the plane to Starling City, he informed his brethren that he would abstain from food and drink until they arrived at their destination, to keep a clear head. Privately he wondered if it would help with this strange feeling he kept getting, of being adrift in time. The flight was long, and gave him too much time to worry about his next move, but finally they had arrived, and he directed the different groups of assassins to their various destinations. R'as al Ghul had insisted that they should be infected to spread contagion more widely. Unfortunately for his erstwhile lord, Sahim had not infected his brothers, nor had he told them about that part of the plan. So he still had the entire vial in his possession. Not that he was alone – and the assassins chosen to accompany him were the same ones R'as al Ghul had assigned to watch him that night.

He made his move as soon as all three of them walked into the abandoned warehouse they had chosen as their safe house. He stabbed the oldest in the back to disorient him and broke his neck. The other did not even fight when Sahim punched him, spinning him around and putting his knife to his throat.

"Do you know why you must die?"

Sahim wasn't sure why he was asking this, only that he wanted to somehow justify his action.

The man nodded, as much as he could with Sahim's dagger at his throat.

"We laid eyes on her, your Beloved. It was without honour, what was done."

Sahim closed his eyes in pain – the reminder of that night still had power to hurt him. He drew his dagger across the man's throat without another word, thinking, I will join you soon, brothers. He had no intention of surviving this night. But he still had to dispose of the virus in some way that would not do more harm than good. He broke into a home to procure some water, unwilling to trust anything he had been given in Nanda Parbat, and his mind kept getting clearer. He knew what he had to do now.

Approaching Thea Queen's apartment, he caught a glimpse of a shadowy figure on the rooftop – Al Saher, guarding his only remaining child, no doubt. He let himself be seen, knowing that any other greeting would get him an arrow in the gut.

"Oliver?"

Sahim sighed. There was a time when Saher was sharper.

"No," he answered. "But I have come to surrender to you and the friends of Oliver Queen."

"Haven't you come to carry out the extermination?" So, Saher was not completely dulled by life in the city.

"Find me a way to destroy a virus – I need to see it done. I will not entrust it to anyone else." Sahim spoke quickly, not wanting to give Saher any time to twist his words.

"I will give you the locations of my brethren once I know how to ensure the virus is gone."

Saher smiled. Sahim had to control himself – he wanted so badly to put an arrow in that smug bastard's face. Once again, stray thoughts were interfering with his focus on his task.

"Well, I'm sure _Felicity_ will have a few ideas."

Saher's voice was knowing, and for a second Sahim was convinced that he _knew_. He let the second pass, and breathed deeply. Why should she have confided in Saher, a man she hated and despised? This was just his way, and Sahim would not be fooled.

"Speak to her, and relay her instructions to me," Sahim answered. Saher acknowledged this and a few seconds later, she was on the line. Even though she was speaking to Saher, he could hear her beloved voice and it was a balm to his spirits.

"She says she will only tell you if you swear that no innocents will be killed." Sahim noticed that she did not ask to speak to him directly, and even though he understood, it caused him pain nevertheless.

"I swear," he answered. He received the instructions, and directions to the laboratory which had an instrument called an autoclave, which would dispose of the type of virus he was handling. An hour later he had broken in with her assistance, had imprisoned the staff which was still there so late at night, and had dragged one man, who'd said he was a chemical engineer, to the autoclave to operate it for him.

"I don't understand," the man said, shaking. They were standing in the antechamber of the room containing the apparatus, and once he realised that Sahim would not kill him, he was reluctant to co-operate. "What do you have that's so dangerous?"

"It is a virus with no known cure, which is transmitted through the air," Sahim answered, and the man's face went grey. He immediately put on protective clothing, and held his hand out for the vial. Sahim watched through glass walls as he entered the adjoining room, opened the vial and threw it in the autoclave. As the machinery operated, obliterating the virus, the room itself was filled with steam and ultraviolet light, to catch any remnants which might have escaped containment. The threat was gone. He felt some measure of relief, mixed with disappointment. He had expected to die in this city.

When he walked out of the laboratory to see himself surrounded by men with firearms, all pointed at him, his heart sang. Pulling out his sword, he prepared to charge them, joyful that he would meet his death that day, after all.

"Ollie, no! You promised you wouldn't kill him!"

His head snapped to the side at the sound of a girl's voice, and with a dawning horror he recognized the diminutive figure struggling against her father and John Diggle. Thea. Oliver's sister. There was a sudden blurring in his vision, and she became a tiny figure with her hair in bunches, and then a baby in his mother's arms. No, it was Oliver Queen's mother that he saw. He shook his head, and she was once again a grown woman, crying for her brother.

"Come on, man! Don't make her watch her brother die!"

John Diggle seemed remarkably forgiving of someone who had sworn vengeance when Sahim had kidnapped his wife. But he was right. Even though he no longer felt like Thea's brother, he had done enough harm to these people. There would be ways to find his death later on.

He changed his hold on the sword to show that he was putting it down, and laid it carefully at his feet.

"Oliver Queen! You are under arrest for the crimes of terrorism, abduction, murder, treason . . . "

The list of crimes went on, but Sahim stopped paying attention after hearing the accusation of treason, which surely of all his crimes carried the death penalty.

"Get down! Down on the ground! Put your hands out! Do it now!"

The words were shouted at him from all directions, and he complied, not resisting when one man knelt on his back, and his companions bound him. He was hustled past Thea Queen into a waiting van, and he was chained securely to its floor.

He was less sanguine when they arrived at their destination, a large building with the sign ARGUS on the front. But he was given no opportunity to resist – dragged from room to room, ordered to undress and put on shapeless clothing with no pockets, divested of all his weapons. The only time he balked was when the people in charge wanted him to submit to what they termed a cavity check. But he submitted, eventually, after he was told they could simply render him unconscious for this search. He would rather be in full possession of his faculties when liberties such as these would be taken with his body.

Eventually he was ushered to a room with a table, and chained to it by the wrists. A friendly looking older man of colour sat opposite him, and immediately protested.

"Is this really necessary," he asked, waving at the handcuffs. "Does Oliver really have to be cuffed to the table?"

Did they think he was a halfwit, to be fooled by such obvious subterfuge?

"My name is Sahim," he said coldly. "And this façade of gentleness does not fool me." The man was not dismayed.

"You see right through us, don't you? I apologise for this clumsy attempt to trick you. It won't happen again."

Sahim had first decided to be silent, but they had already managed to trick him into speaking, so he would ask a question.

"Why am I here? Am I not to be arrested?"

"Your family wants you back, Sahim. They want Oliver Queen to come back to them."

Sahim nodded. He had thought as much. But resurrecting Oliver Queen would take more than a conversation, he was sure. One thought reassured him – to bring back Oliver Queen would mean Sahim's death. So he would die after all. After what he had done, the thought only brought him joy.

And so it started – the days blurred into each other as he exchanged the interrogation room for a cell with a cot, a chair, a sink and a toilet. The lights were never fully extinguished, and he was never allowed more than a shallow sleep before he was woken up, either by a blaring noise or by someone shouting in his ear. He explored the confines of his cell, and his boredom caused him to start an exercise routine, which was greatly improved once he found that in the ceiling above there were bars which were strong enough to hold his weight. He was starting to get flashes of memory of his previous life, and in one of them he let himself drop to break a bar to which he was chained. But this one seemed of stronger construction than that. Whatever drugs had been in his system were being slowly expelled from his body, and his thinking alternated between clear and foggy.

His conversations with the man who he learned was a counsellor never became more than that – conversations. Occasionally a woman would enter to ask him about the virus, and whether he was sure that it had been fully destroyed. He would answer to the best of his ability, no longer feeling he owed anything to R'as al Ghul. Except he could not let go of the man himself, whose figure loomed large in his head. Whenever he was asked a direct question about him, his lips froze and he could no longer say anything. Even though his identity as Sahim was being chipped away, he still could not see himself killing the man he hated now, above all others. In an effort to restore him to his former self, he was shown messages from Thea Queen, and John Diggle, but never from _her_. He found he could not even bring himself to ask after her – even her name was stuck in his throat. He had no right to say it, after what he had done.

And so it went on, with days surely becoming weeks, until one night Sahim went to sleep and Oliver Queen woke up. He had been allowed to sleep longer than usual, and was dreaming. He dreamt that he killed Diggle and his horror only increased as he dreamt of Felicity. He woke with a start, his eyes flying open in the half-light of his cell. What had he _done_? Was it all a nightmare? Which part was real? He was sure that he'd seen and heard Diggle long after he remembered killing him. But what about Felicity? What he'd dreamt of was too real to be a vision. What had he done to Felicity? Everything else was covered in a foggy haze, and every time he tried to work something out, a sharp stabbing pain in his head made him want to stop. Slowly, the more recent events started coming back – destroying the Alpha/Omega virus, watching his baby sister shoot him in the arm, (and that was a mindfuck and a half) marrying Nyssa . . . he had to stop before he really went crazy. His cell was provided with a sink and running water and he took advantage of that, splashing his face and trying to fit his head under the faucet.

The electronic lock on his cell opened with a thud, and one of his guards came in, making a quip about showers which Oliver didn't really listen to. The guard seemed to be used to this, though, and Oliver held his hands out for the cuffs. As he walked along the corridor to the interrogation room, more and more started to come back. He was at ARGUS, they were deprogramming him – seriously, he'd been that far gone? If his nightmare about Felicity was real (and it couldn't be, it couldn't, there was no way), then he'd been so far down the rabbit hole he didn't think he could ever find his way back.

"So, Oliver, are you feeling different today?"

The man in front of him was the same one he'd been talking to for weeks – a cynical part of him wondered if they'd chosen him because he seemed to fall for a father figure with boring regularity.

"I don't know what you mean."

He answered mildly, and the counsellor stopped his incessant note taking to stare at him, open-mouthed.

"Tell me, what's your name?"

"I'm Oliver Queen," he answered simply.

"Would it surprise you to find out that's not how you've been answering this question for the time you've been here?"

Oliver looked away. Then he had been under, completely. Unless ARGUS were pulling a con on him, and why would they do that? What would be the point? He decided to try his luck.

"Can I go home? Or am I going to jail?"

The man shook his head, still projecting a friendly vibe. It occurred to Oliver that he didn't even know this man's name, but he wasn't interested enough to ask.

"Oliver, we need to keep you for a few days more, to make sure you're fully recovered," the therapist said. Was he a therapist? Or a really good ARGUS agent, specialised in making people trust him?

"Let's go through some things . . ." he continued, and Oliver groaned internally, though he was careful not to show anything on his face. More questions which he couldn't answer, probably about the virus. ARGUS hadn't changed. Although at least this time they weren't waterboarding him to get answers. What he really wanted was to ask what he had done, what was real and what wasn't, and he didn't trust ARGUS to tell him the truth. If they even knew the whole of it. He had a sudden flash of himself threatening to cut someone's throat, and that couldn't have been Felicity, could it? What had he _done_?

He answered distractedly when he was asked his full name, date of birth, parents' names, parents' dates of birth, and on and on, until the therapist was satisfied. He started gathering his papers and preparing to leave with an air about him of a man whose task has been accomplished.

"Wait," Oliver said. "My sister, my friends," (Felicity, his mind said) "I need to know if they're ok, if I hurt them . . ."

The therapist brought out a tablet and, while saying that Oliver had already seen all this, he started playing clips – Thea, reminding him who he was, begging him to come back, Diggle, saying that nothing was his fault, _come back to us, man_ , but no Felicity. At the end of one clip he caught a few seconds that were abruptly cut off, of Felicity saying that she couldn't do it, and her heels rapidly clicking away. He was hit by a flashback so strong that it nauseated him, of Felicity's voice saying: "I won't just lie here and let you do this," and he _knew_ , he knew everything. His world was in pieces around him, and he was the one who'd destroyed it. He heard nothing of what the therapist said next. He got up when urged to get up, he went where he was led, he held his hands out to be uncuffed, and he sat on his cot, all without saying another word.

The more time passed, the more he remembered – the things he'd done as Al Sahim were unforgivable. Added to everything he'd done before that, and his mind couldn't take it. All the people he'd killed, all the deaths he'd caused, all culminating with what he'd done to Felicity. Everything came together: Sara, Shado, his mother, his father, countless others – they'd died because of him. And he'd still allowed himself to be used as a weapon, even with Slade Wilson as a cautionary tale. And then Felicity. He could still see her, under him, crying. Lying on her bed, like a marionette with cut strings. He wanted to scream, and beat his head bloody against the cinderblock walls, but he did none of those things, just lay down and waited, as the memories played on a continuous loop in his head, as his hands tightened convulsively on his bedsheet, twisting it into a makeshift rope.

The lights never went out in his cell. They just dimmed at around midnight. When he heard the muted commotion signalling a shift change, he got up, grabbed his sheet, and the chair, dragging it under the bars he'd been using to exercise with. It was a matter of seconds to get on it, loop the sheet over the bars, and back around his neck into a noose. As he kicked the chair away, his last conscious thoughts were of his parents, dead for him. His city, his friends, abandoned. Felicity, destroyed.

 _Diggle is the only one who gets to see the video and only when he insists, after noticing the characteristic bruising round Oliver's neck. He manages sell it to Thea with a story about fighting in the exercise yard (as though ARGUS had such a thing), while Felicity never even asks about it. But Diggle knows. He's seen it before._

 _In the movies, security video is always grainy, black and white. Diggle thinks it must be a purely aesthetic choice, because webcams, nanny cams, everything's high quality video nowadays. The only thing missing is the sound. He starts watching a half hour before the 'incident', as Waller was calling it, and marvels that no-one manning the security feed notices how Oliver is twisting the bedsheet into a rope. At around midnight, the lights dim slightly, and Oliver springs into action, drags a chair into the middle of the room, gets on it, and throws the sheet up above his head, looping it around his neck and tying it off. He doesn't even hesitate before kicking the chair away, and Diggle watches the digital counter ticking away the seconds as Oliver's feet kick a few times, before relaxing. The bile rises in his throat, just as the lights in the cell start flicking with purpose, and guards burst in, one of them putting his arms around Oliver's legs and lifting his body, to ease the pressure on his neck. They're yelling something, and Diggle can lip-read "Cut him down!", as well as various expletives. They manage to cut through the sheet, and lay Oliver down on the ground. One of the guards feels for a pulse, and seems satisfied. Another guard comes in with a gurney, and they all load Oliver on it before wheeling him out. Diggle knows what happens next – Oliver wakes up in four-point restraints, under suicide watch. He is himself again, according to Waller and the therapist. Though Diggle thinks he can't really trust the therapist, not when he started talking about post-hypnotic suggestion causing the suicide attempt. The Oliver in the video was in his right mind – waited for hours, chose the right time, and used the materials in his cell. If Oliver is really under post-hypnotic suggestion, it's all about R'as al Ghul – Oliver never even tried to fight R'as after becoming al Sahim, even when he was planning to destroy the killer virus._

 _Once they take him out of suicide watch, Waller says that Oliver asks for only one thing: transport to Lian Yu. And a facility to make a goodbye video for his sister and his friends. In the video it just looks like Oliver needs some time away to clear his head. Diggle knows better, but doesn't want to destroy Thea's hopes. Felicity just watches the video without changing expression. Something happened between them, but in a way Diggle doesn't even want to know what it is. If Oliver thinks it's unforgivable, and Felicity agrees, then he, Diggle, doesn't want to know._

 _He waits a month, watching Thea's face get sadder, watching Felicity going through the motions with nothing behind her eyes, and then decides to make his move. He isn't sure whether he persuades Felicity or whether she lets herself be persuaded. All he knows is that she finally agrees, and asks for two weeks' grace to persuade Oliver to come back. He allows himself the hopeful thought that maybe it will be enough to fix whatever had been broken between them. He'll gladly postpone his own reckoning with Oliver to restore the old Felicity to them._

 _He has a moment of doubt after the helicopter takes off and he leaves Felicity on her own in Purgatory, but he has a glimpse of a tall figure with a quiver strapped to his back approaching the beach, and he feels reassured. They would fix this. They always do._


	3. back to the island

The beach wasn't completely dark. There was the fire Oliver had built, the moon was full, and the stars covered the entire night sky, stretching endlessly as far as the eye could see. All she could hear was the sound of the waves lapping against the pebbled beach. Ironically, it was almost romantic. Except for the fact that her words were anything but.

"I came here to kill you."

Oliver nodded. He didn't even look surprised, just resigned, and . . . relieved? Was that relief she saw on his face?

"Get on your knees."

Felicity didn't even recognize her own voice anymore. It sounded like she was hearing it from far away, harsh and distorted. She felt like she'd been burning up for months, carrying this rage inside her, and now she could finally give in to it, let it consume her.

Oliver got up on his knees and looked at her expectantly.

Felicity wanted to scream at him to say something, to say _anything_. Why didn't he protest that it wasn't him, that it wasn't his fault? What was he waiting for? She remembered that time in Central, with the guy who made everyone angry – did it feel like this? A red wave, taking her over, carrying her away. Except it wasn't carrying her away. That was the problem. When she had imagined this part, and her satisfaction in making him pay for what he'd done to her, she'd pictured cold-eyed, blank-faced Sahim, not Oliver in a ratty sweat-stained t-shirt and cargo pants, with his ever present quiver at his back. He'd put the bow down to build the fire, but he wasn't even looking at it now. He was looking at her, as if to say he trusted her to do the right thing. And she would.

"Close your eyes."

Her voice was close to cracking. Why had she said that? Why couldn't she look him in the eyes and do this? He obeyed her, immediately. She took a couple of deep breaths, and curled her finger around the trigger. That's all it would take, slight pressure, and it would be over. And then what? Her brain would not stop buzzing, slamming her with images of the future, of Oliver dead at her feet. And then what? Would she be instantly cured? Would the memories be erased from her head?

She tried to focus on Sahim pressing her into the mattress, holding her down, making her feel like she was nothing, but all she saw in front of her was Oliver, looking lost. She squared her shoulders and tried to remember the stance, and aim. It would be easy enough, at this distance. And quick. And then he would be gone. The only man she'd ever truly loved. But that was in the past. He'd destroyed all that, hadn't he? She couldn't possibly still love Oliver. That was ludicrous.

Except that she couldn't pull the trigger. She had the same epiphany she'd felt when talking about her rage, the same kind of brainstorm. She couldn't kill him. The thought of being in a world where he wasn't was painful enough. The thought of killing him was not to be borne. I had a plan, she wanted to scream. It was supposed to make things better. She could almost hear Oliver's voice lecturing her: _Guns don't make things better, or worse. They're just tools._

She looked at his face as he knelt, hands on his thighs, waiting patiently, even though that little wrinkle between his eyebrows was starting to form. So, there was still some Oliver left, behind the island mask. What now? She obviously couldn't kill him. Every time she saw herself hitting him, maybe using the gun to pistol-whip him like she did Cooper, maybe shooting him in the leg, something in her shrank back. He didn't have any problem hurting her, so why was she hesitating? No, she thought. The real question was how far she accepted that Oliver had really been someone else when he'd . . . hurt her.

She looked at him, and sighed. This was a waste of time. She realised that she was still pointing a fully loaded gun at Oliver's face, and shuddered, releasing the clip, and putting it in her pocket. Oliver's eyes flew open at the sound, and he watched in amazement as she racked the slide to eject the bullet in the chamber.

"Felicity . . ."

"What?"

Her voice was sharp.

"It's not going to be that easy, Oliver."

His eyes widened, but he didn't say anything else, just stared at the ground. Her legs didn't want to support her anymore and she sat down, heavily. Her exhaustion was bone-deep, and she just wanted to fall asleep, forever.

"Are you ok?" His voice was tentative, and she felt a bit of her anger return.

"No, Oliver, I am not ok. I am as far from ok as you can get. A space shuttle couldn't get to ok from where I am right now."

Oliver was looking at her, his head tilted slightly to the side. His expression was unreadable, and it just made her angrier. She needed him to say something, show something, but he reminded her of when he'd just come back from the island, three years ago. Rationally she knew that three years of progress couldn't have just been erased by R'as al Ghul's brain wipe. It was just a matter of getting him to open up to her, but she was just so tired. It had taken all her energy just to get here, and she felt drained, and blank. And why was it up to her to do this? It's because he hurt you the most, she thought. But it was strange. She didn't feel hurt. She just felt empty, like her insides had been hollowed out, like she was just a shell, going through the motions of her life.

"Felicity . . ." She looked up, startled. She couldn't make out his expression in the flickering firelight. His next words were tentative, like he was choosing every word carefully, like he no longer knew how to have a conversation.

"Why don't you get some sleep? We can . . . we can talk in the morning."

"Really, Oliver." Her tone was bitter. " _You_ want to talk. That's why you ran to a remote island in the middle of nowhere as soon as you remembered your name."

He looked away from her angry glare, rubbing his hands over his head in a gesture so familiar it caused her actual physical pain.

"I'm sor-"

"Do not tell me you're sorry, Oliver, don't you dare," she snapped, cutting his words short. "I don't need an apology from you."

She put the gun back in her bag, and lay down, using it as a pillow. The night was so quiet, nothing like the city. She was sure she'd never fall asleep.

She was woken by a seagull, and realized she'd slept through the night. And late into the morning – the sun felt warm on her cheek. The fire was burnt out, and her glasses were neatly folded up next to her head. Had she taken them off, or had Oliver done that for her? She looked blearily around her, and saw his blurred figure standing at the waterline, looking out to sea. She cleared her throat, and he turned around, but he was standing against the light, and she couldn't make out his expression.

He walked towards her, reaching out as if he was going to help her up, and she scrambled up before he got close. She didn't know if she could bear his touch yet. He winced, and she felt bad. Then she felt angry at herself for feeling bad. He looked to the side, unwilling, at first, to meet her eyes.

"We need to start walking – we don't want to be wandering around the forest after dark."

"Where are we going?" Good question, Felicity. Had she planned for any of this? According to her brilliant plan, by now, Oliver should be dead, and she'd be wandering over the island, stumbling over landmines. Or she could have gone to the secret prison, maybe, and confessed to murdering someone and asked for a ride off the island. As plans went, this hadn't been one of her best.

His voice was scratchy, as if he wasn't used to talking anymore.

"Remember last time . . ." He paused. She looked at him, and his face looked sad. Ah, yes, she thought. Before. She nodded, trying to encourage him to continue.

"There's this cargo plane – it's where I stayed with Shado . . . and Slade."

More bad shit, she thought. _Before_ she might have tried to lighten the atmosphere with a quip. Now she just didn't have the energy. Sorry, Oliver. The well's run dry. She nodded and trudged on. She'd forgotten that the first part was a climb up a cliff face, which wasn't that steep, but still too precarious for Felicity Smoak, klutz extraordinaire. Of course she nearly slipped and broke her neck, and of course Oliver grabbed her arm and pulled her up. She'd thought she'd shudder and throw up when he touched her, but the reality was much more prosaic. It was just his hand, like it had been for the last three years – warm and strong, a reassuring pressure on her shoulder when she needed it. He let go as soon as she was steady, and looked like he wanted to apologize again. A look from her stopped that, and they walked on.

Some time later, when they still hadn't arrived, she decided that the talk had to happen now. She couldn't wait any longer. They'd been walking in silence, and the further they went, the more she felt everything coming to a boil inside her. She needed answers. And she couldn't wait until they reached the plane. She had to know why she'd spent the last two months feeling like a zombie. The question burst out of her as Oliver was carefully navigating the roots of an overgrown tree, checking the soil for landmines and hidden tripwires.

"Why did you do it, Oliver? You could have said no! You could have told them to go to hell!"

"No, I couldn't!" Oliver looked aggrieved at being questioned by her, and oh, he'd always been capable of pissing her off.

"So you're telling me that when they reformatted you, the setting was on rapist? Is that what you're saying?"

She was angry she could barely see. She should have shot him on the beach.

"That's not what it was like!"

"Then fucking tell me, Oliver!"

He looked surprised. Oh, so sorry my language is offensive to you, she thought.

"What do you want to know, Felicity? They remade me, and I was someone else – I even thought differently, but when I look back, it's like it was me doing – everything!"

He ran out of steam abruptly, and seemed to realise that he'd been looming over her, practically yelling in her face. He shrank back, looking horrified. Her anger subsided and she felt the irrational desire to comfort him. What did they do to you, Oliver? She repeated the question, out loud this time, and he turned towards her.

"I thought, before they started, that it would just be weapons training. Because, apparently, my sword-fighting was . . . not good."

She choked out a bitter laugh – the mighty Oliver Queen was brought to admit that he couldn't perfectly handle a weapon. He looked at her, puzzled, but she just signed for him to go on.

"It's become . . . a blur, now. I remember it, but it's like it happened to someone else. Like I'm watching a movie. I'd get one hour of sleep, and then they'd wake me, and start. I'd kneel for hours, and there was always someone reciting League teaching at me. I had to memorise everything. It wasn't just sword fighting. I had to memorise it, and repeat it, and I had to get it right the first time, and if I got it wrong they beat me. Sometimes they'd just chain me to the wall, and whip me. Sometimes they let me go to sleep and woke me five minutes later. And it never stopped. I think they were drugging me – in the food, in the water, I felt like I was off-balance the entire time. The only thing, the only _person_ that made sense, was R'as al Ghul."

Felicity stood there, open-mouthed. Once he got started, it just all came out of him – slowly, halting, but unstoppable. She'd never heard Oliver say so much at one go, not in the three years she'd known him. Hadn't he talked about this with anyone? What kind of therapists did they have at ARGUS, that they never made him talk about what he'd been through?

He stammered to a halt, stuck on that name. He'd gone pale, and was starting to sweat.

"I think I tried to fight it at first. I kept trying to remember things – my parents, Thea. You."

He snuck a look at her.

"But I was so tired. And then, one afternoon, I just. I gave in. Every time, when they were beating me, or during the water-torture – it was always R'as al Ghul who made it stop. I know it's part of the technique, part of how they break you. But knowing it, doesn't make it not work. I'd been hanging on the wall for hours. They put weights on my knees so I couldn't stand, and I thought my arms were coming out of my sockets. And then he came. He opened the shackles and lifted me off the wall. And I . . . I loved him for it."

His voice had become a hoarse whisper, so she almost didn't catch the last words. He swallowed and cleared his throat, trying to continue.

"It was like he was my father, and my teacher, and my saviour, all rolled into one. He told me what my name was, and it was like a baptism."

Oliver seemed to notice her standing in front of him, horrified. He looked away, unable to meet her eyes.

"Once I gave in, it was so peaceful. Nothing mattered, except the league, and R'as al Ghul. When he sent me after Nyssa I was happy to do that for him – I was so grateful to him for saving me . . . not from the torture. From my previous life."

Oliver looked at her, willing her to understand. And she did. Kind of. That still didn't explain the part that directly applied to her, though. She felt almost selfish at bringing it up. And he looked terrible – his face was ashen grey and sweaty. If she didn't know better, and if she hadn't hacked into ARGUS to check the results of his physical, she would have said he was having a heart attack. It took her all her willpower to move closer to him, and slowly, like she was approaching a wild horse, put her hand on his arm. Even so, he stared at her hand like he'd never seen it before. She could feel his whole body trembling, and the look in his eyes shook her to the core.

"Oliver."

She had to say his name twice before he stopped looking for escape routes, his eyes darting wildly around him, and finally focused on her face. On the beach he'd been a remnant of his former self. This was what he'd been hiding, what was left of Oliver Queen after the league had remade him in their image.

"Oliver, why don't we sit down here for a while? You look like you could use a break."

As she spoke, she watched him, and like magic, or like someone with almost complete self-control, Oliver calmed down. She could almost see the mask settling down over his features once more. She hurriedly took her hand off his arm – after seeing what was really inside Oliver, this calm version scared her. It reminded her too much of Sahim.

"No. We need to keep moving." He turned as if to walk away, then realised she wasn't moving. He seemed to see that his tone had annoyed her.

"I'm worried about the weather, Felicity. I don't want us to get caught in a monsoon."

Felicity groaned. Really? On top of everything else, torrential rains. Awesome. That was all she needed. Especially as the thought of rain, or any kind of falling water, made her realize that a situation which had been starting to build up for a while was really getting pressing now, and for what seemed like the hundredth time that day, she cursed herself for getting trapped on a remote island, particularly one without any bathrooms.

"Um. Excuse me?"

Oliver had walked ahead with purpose, and now retraced his steps, holding on to his patience with an effort that showed on his face. She knew what was wrong with him – he was feeling vulnerable after opening up to her. Oh, that isn't all, Oliver. If you stop talking again, well, I still have a gun. He looked at her, not even speaking, just making a 'get on with it' type gesture.

"I need to pee. Urgently. Right now."

You wanted blunt, Oliver? Well, you got it.

He rubbed the bridge of his nose, his eyes shut – she bet he was cursing women and their tiny bladders. He looked around him, and seemed to find a good spot, a few steps off the path.

"Do you need . . . leaves? I think these are ok?" He was hesitant, seemingly worried that he was overstepping, but she was too desperate to be shy.

"No, it's fine, I have wipes – no, I won't litter, Oliver, I'm not stupid. I just need to be sure the spot I use doesn't have poison ivy, or whatever. And you have to move away a bit."

He looked at her, puzzled. Then he nodded, and moved a few metres down the trail. As she squatted and waited for her suddenly shy bladder so co-operate, she wondered that she was getting more comfortable with Oliver. That wasn't the plan, back in Starling. The plan had been revenge. And now? What was her plan now? Was she actually feeling sorry for Oliver? She still hadn't got the explanation she wanted, the one she needed, to make sense of the blasted hellscape that was her life at the moment. And she'd get it out of Oliver if it was the last thing she did.

After what seemed like forever, they finally arrived at the plane which she remembered as being emptier the last time she was there. Right now it looked like the back room in an army surplus store. Then she was immediately irritated at herself – she _didn't_ care. She needed to know the rest. She'd given him enough time. He'd stalked in ahead of her, and was busy clearing off something which she realized was a cot. Where had he been sleeping, then? And she'd done it again. Who the fuck cared where he'd been sleeping? Enough.

"Oliver!" It came out like a bark. She knew he heard her, because his hands tightened on the blankets he was pulling out of a box. But he didn't turn around.

"How much of al Sahim was you, Oliver? How could you do that to me?"

He froze with his back to her, seemingly looking for the answer to her question in the blankets. He passed his hand over his face, and turned towards her, taking in her angry expression. He made half a gesture towards her, maybe to put his hand on her shoulder like he used to, and she shrank back. He winced, and she looked down, annoyed that she felt sorry for him, even a little. When she looked up, he was leaning against some boxes, and his expression was less inscrutable than it had been all day.

"When I was al Sahim, I thought Oliver was dead. And then I saw you, in that warehouse. He saw you. And I don't know how, but he loved you. I loved you. And then Lyla started shooting. And we were _fucked_."

Felicity blinked. That was . . . not what she'd expected to hear. Apart from the profanity, which she'd rarely heard him using, that was why she hadn't been searched? Because Oliver couldn't keep his multiple personalities in check? Felicity tried to hold on to her temper, but she was starting to lose her patience.

"You could have said no to them. You could have faked it!"

Oliver glared away, and opened his mouth to answer her, and then bit back his words. He tried again.

"No, I couldn't! I had to choose, Felicity, just like they made you choose! And I knew, that if I refused, they would make the choice for me! Ivo killed Shado because I wouldn't choose! Slade . . . _my mother_ . . ."

His voice broke on the last word.

"And I know, _I know_ I was Sahim by then, and I shouldn't have remembered any of it! But I did, just like I remembered what I felt about you."

He tried to look at her again, and seemed to wilt in the face of her fury.

"I was so scared that they would just kill you, and leave your body for me to find. I had to convince them that I was theirs, completely, so they'd leave you alone."

She was still angry, though it was getting harder to focus it on Oliver. At the moment, he seemed just as broken as she felt.

"Why me? Why not Lyla?"

The moment the words came out of her mouth she wanted to pull them back. How very Winston Smith of you, she thought. She flushed, ashamed. When she looked up, Oliver had nothing but sympathy in his eyes.

"R'as al Ghul . . ." the name still gave Oliver difficulty, and he had to pause for a few seconds. "He said that because Lyla is a mother, that . . ."

Felicity groaned.

"Are you freaking serious?"

"I don't even know if I believed him – maybe when he told me. But afterwards." Oliver looked pensive. "Afterwards . . . everything fell apart. Nothing made sense anymore. And I started to think he'd just wanted to break me completely, by making me hurt you. And instead, I just lost faith in him, and in the League."

Felicity hardly heard his last words. Did I just say that? I just wished Lyla in my place? Am I that messed up? The sudden silence brought her head up. Oliver was looking at her, pleading for her understanding. She didn't know if she could give him that, yet. She had to know everything.

"Was that even a real punishment? Or was it something he came up with, just for you?"

Oliver winced, like it had occurred to him too.

"It was on the list they kept making me memorize. Though they made it sound like it died out in the middle ages."

He was hesitating, like he sensed she wasn't going to like the rest. She stood in front of him, her arms folded, unwilling to give him a pass on it.

"It was something to do with conquest . . . the spoils of war. That's how they explained it to me."

She'd been wrong, on the beach. Rage wasn't a red mist. It was pure white, like a nuclear blast. Oliver staggered, and she realised, distantly, that she'd punched him in the jaw. Her hand hurt like hell but she brushed it aside like it was nothing.

"I am not _spoils_ , Oliver! I am not a thing!"

She was losing it. She could feel her control slipping away. She was distantly aware of trying and failing to catch her breath, and Oliver moving closer. She looked at her hand, and wondered where the gun had come from. She pointed it at Oliver, and this time her hand shook.

"Keep away from me! I won't let you hurt me again!"

She could see his lips moving, but couldn't hear what he was saying. What was the point, anyway? What had she gained through all this? Now she knew _why_ , and it didn't help her at all. All her life she'd been taught to beware monsters, and, and – we just invited him in, she thought. She'd been right that night in the safehouse – she was just a bug to R'as al Ghul. He'd crushed her with as little thought as she'd swat away a fly. She saw Oliver try to move even closer through the haze that obscured her vision, and she tried, she really tried to pull the trigger this time, and she failed, again. Of course she couldn't shoot Oliver. Why had she ever thought she could? She hadn't bought the gun for _Oliver_ , she realised, as she put it under her chin instead.

"Felicity!"

His anguished bark cut through her panic. She focused on him. He looked frantic, his eyes wild.

"Please . . . please give me the gun." His voice was shaking.

"I just want it to stop hurting, Oliver."

She couldn't speak above a whisper, but he heard her. His eyes were suspiciously shiny, and she wondered why _he_ was crying. She took a few deep breaths, and closed her eyes. It would be quick. And then all of it would stop, the nightmares, the flashbacks, the self-recrimination, all of it. As well as everything else. No more worrying about the company, and the Arrow, and their mission. It would destroy her mother, of course. And she would never find out why her father had left them. Did she really believe in an afterlife? Or was this all there was? Was she throwing it away? Suddenly her mom appeared before her, in all her Vegas brassiness, looking as hard as nails and twice as tough – _is that why I gave up my life to raise you, to let some asshole win?_ She felt a sudden sense of shame, and was glad her mom wasn't really there, to see her give up so easily.

She opened her eyes, and the world around her started to come into focus again. Her breathing didn't sound so loud in her ears anymore, and the ambient sounds of the forest started to filter through the rushing in her head. Her hand hurt, she realized distantly, and when she focused on the pain, she became conscious of the gun, her hand cramping around it, pressed painfully under her chin. Oliver was looking at her, his eyes pleading, his hands outstretched. She'd forgotten just how blue his eyes were. The thought came to her out of nowhere, and she had a sudden impulse to laugh. Was she still crushing on Oliver, even after all this? She pushed the thought down with an effort. Enough with the dramatics, Felicity. She took a few deep breaths, and carefully handed the gun to Oliver, wincing as her hand released its convulsive grip. All the energy drained out of her in a flood, and she sat on the cot, heavily.

Oliver grabbed the gun out of her hands, checking the magazine and the chamber. Only when he was satisfied that they were both empty, and had been all along, did he very carefully walk out of the cargo plane, lean against a tree, and throw up. She wondered distantly if he was ok, and closed her eyes, feeling nauseated. Her breaths sounded very loud to her, and she wondered if she was going to throw up, too.

His voice, coming from right above her head, startled her.

"Felicity, never do that again. Promise me."

"Do what again?" Oliver was looking at her like she'd lost her mind. "You threw up," she added, in a small voice.

He passed a hand over his face, and she noticed distantly that it was shaking. Then he carefully sat down next to her, and she could see that he was making an effort to be calm. He took her hands gently, and covered them with his own.

"Felicity, you tried to shoot yourself."

She shrugged. "The gun wasn't loaded. You saw me take the bullets out," she muttered.

He stared at her intensely.

"How could I be sure you didn't put them back in? And I saw your face, Felicity. You forgot it wasn't loaded!"

She looked down, embarrassed. He was right, she forgot. She got annoyed, suddenly.

"I'm sorry, Oliver! I'm sorry I can't deal with it and move on, like you did!"

"Felicity, I ran away to a remote island where I'd spent a couple of years being tortured, blown up, and held prisoner – that's pretty far from dealing with it."

"You never told me about being blown up." Oliver gave her a look. She'd missed those looks, she realized. Her hand hurt, and she remembered punching Oliver.

"How's your jaw?"

"My jaw?" He fingered it, and shrugged. "Your hand," he suddenly remembered, and looked closer at it, gently extending the fingers one by one. He was touching her again, she realized, and she didn't want to run away, or scream, or throw up. It was just Oliver, who always handled her like she was made of fine china.

"It's a bit bruised," Oliver was saying, "but I don't think anything's broken."

Ha, good one, Oliver. Very on the nose. He let go of her hand, and she hated herself for feeling relieved. And then she hated herself for hating herself. This was getting her nowhere. He was still looking at her, expecting an explanation for the cliché attempted suicide trope which she was already feeling embarrassed about, but she didn't really have one. She looked around her, at the interior of the plane, and it struck her again how full it seemed, compared to the last time she'd been here. There were boxes full of Army supplies, some even had ARGUS stamped on them – she could even see, at the far end, a pile of packets with the word MEAL emblazoned on them.

"Looks like an Army surplus store threw up in here, Oliver. Is that your new job?"

Yes, Oliver, after the previous Emmy reel moment, I have decided to go with flippant. That's me, full of surprises. He gave her another of his looks – she should really make a database. Which would be ironic, as yesterday she'd just wanted to put a bullet in his head.

"Diggle, I think? Or maybe Lyla? I'm not sure – a few days after I got here, a cargo plane buzzed the island and dropped off a few crates. I'm just glad all the landmines on the plain went off years ago."

"Diggle? And Lyla? The woman you kidnapped in front of her baby daughter? They wanted to help you?"

Come to think of it, Felicity remembered that Diggle had talked about Oliver coming back, especially with Thea, and not a hint of wanting revenge, or payback, or anything. Oliver was staring into space, rubbing his neck.

"Waller said Diggle was worried about me – because of what happened. At ARGUS. Or maybe it was Waller, and she was worried that Thea would sue, or something."

He noticed her look of incomprehension.

"They didn't tell you."

"What? What were they supposed to tell me?"

She tried to think back to the day they'd watched Oliver's video message, and remembered Thea asking Diggle what was wrong, and she really had to dig deep down for this one, with Oliver's neck. She forced herself to recreate the image of Oliver on the tablet screen, and suddenly remembered a ring of black bruises.

"Wait a minute – Diggle said it was fighting in the exercise yard got you those bruises!" She was angry now. She'd believed him.

"I –really? You think ARGUS has an exercise yard?" Oliver sounded pained, like he really expected her to have memorized ARGUS blueprints and treatment of prisoners.

"Do not start with me, Oliver!" She could feel the anger returning. "What did you _do_?"

"I woke up, Felicity!"

She'd missed that, hearing him say her name, precisely enunciated, like he was auditioning for a part on Downton Abbey.

"I woke up and everything was _gone_. They made me think I killed Diggle! And even though it wasn't real, at the time, I didn't care that it was Diggle. I watched him die, and I felt _nothing_. My own sister shot me – the expression on her face, like she _hated_ me. And then I remembered what I did to you. And that wasn't a hallucination. I destroyed you."

He turned away from her, shaking.

"It was stupid of them to give me a sheet," he muttered. "I could have done it with a shoelace."

Before she knew what she was going to do, she punched him in the chest.

"How could you have been so selfish? Were you thinking of anyone except yourself? It would have killed Thea!"

Oliver shrugged.

"Thea's the only reason why I didn't finish the job once I came here. Plenty of trees around."

"And what about me," Felicity raged. "Did you even remember me when you made your grand gesture?"

Oliver was looking at her with a careful non-expression.

"Felicity . . . I _was_ thinking of you. I was thinking you wanted me dead."

Felicity felt the last remnants of her anger melt away – she'd wanted him to pay for breaking her, and he was broken, too. She wanted to keep yelling at him for being selfish, even though she'd just had her own wallow in self-pity. She wanted to reassure him, but wasn't sure she could actually touch him. They were a real pair. His eyes were damp, and as she watched he scrubbed over them, roughly.

"Why are you here, Felicity, really?"

"I thought I wanted you dead, but I was wrong." She decided to be honest for once.

"I think I'm here to forgive you. Even though it wasn't you who hurt me," she continued.

Oliver shook his head. "I don't deserve forgiveness," he said.

Felicity took a deep breath. She was going to try this, and hope it wouldn't do more harm than good. She pushed on his shoulder to turn him towards her, and put her hand on his cheek. His expression changed, from sadness to shock.

"Yes, you do. And you should start by forgiving yourself."

His face crumpled up and she had to restrain her own shock – this wasn't the single manly tear of stoic suffering, these were full on sobs which took her by surprise, and him too. He covered his face with his hands, and let go, completely. She patted his shoulder tentatively, trying to calm him down, and eventually he stopped. He blew his nose, looking slightly embarrassed.

"Did you just say, 'there, there'?"

His voice sounded stuffy and choked up, but at least he was trying to lighten the atmosphere. She decided to follow his lead – there'd been enough inconvenient truths told today to last her a year. Maybe even a lifetime.

"I don't actually know what you do when a superhero breaks down in front of you," she answered, trying to keep her tone light. "Maybe I should watch Man of Steel again."

He rolled his eyes, and she smiled. He looked at her, and she blushed – his eyes were full of awe, and she didn't deserve that. She really didn't.

"So, how do _you_ deal, and move on," he asked. "Because island life is obviously not enough."

I see through your cunning plan, Oliver – if we don't mention it, we can't be hurt by it. But it would do no harm to play along.

"Oh, support groups, group therapy, target practice, the usual," she answered flippantly. He snorted.

"Target practice?" He put his hands apart, measuring about a foot. "We were this far apart – you couldn't have missed me."

"Stop joking about the fact that I pointed a gun at you, Oliver! I can't believe I did that. Oh God, what are our lives," she groaned suddenly. "And what am I going to do here for two weeks?"

Oliver looked at her, questioning.

"You could work on some coding on your tablet-"

"Didn't bring it."

"Or on your phone-"

"Nope."

" _Felicity!_ " His tone seemed to indicate that a Felicity without electronics showed that the situation had been worse than he'd thought.

She was resting her head in her hands, elbows on her knees.

"I know, ok? I know. I was in a crazy, post-apocalyptic mind space, and I didn't think I'd need them. After. Do not say a word, Oliver!"

He'd opened his mouth, probably to yell her name some more, but at her words he mimed zipping his lips shut.

"We are going to move past homicidal and suicidal antics, and do . . . something."

Oliver raised his hand, like he was in class. She rolled her eyes.

"Can you code on paper? Because I have so many notebooks here. Half a crate of office supplies. I don't know what Diggle thought I was going to be writing."

"That's . . . actually a good idea! Going back to my roots, kicking it old school." She looked sideways at Oliver, who was trying hard to suppress a smile. "Yes, I know, never say that again, right."

He just looked at her, and if she didn't know better, she'd think there was love shining out of his eyes. Even if there was, she wasn't sure she was ready for that yet. If ever.

"Don't stop on my account," he said mildly.

Her stomach interrupted the conversation with a loud growl, and she groaned. She hadn't eaten in over a day, having been too nervous to force down anything more than a cup of coffee before getting on the helicopter.

"There's food, right? I know they say that MRE stands for 'meals rejected by everyone', but they're supposed to be nutritional, right? Come to think of it, what were you going to eat here if they hadn't given you all that stuff?"

Oliver gave her a sideways glance.

"I haven't actually eaten any of the MREs. Ever since . . . Nanda Parbat," he lowered his eyes, "I've had a problem eating food that I haven't you know, hunted. And there's a whole carton of water-purification tablets in there." He waved vaguely towards the end of the plane. "And anyway, when I was here first, that was the only way I could eat. Hunting, fishing – good thing Yao Fei and Shado were around to tell me which plants I could eat and which were poison."

Felicity wondered what Slade Wilson had taught him, but she knew better than to ask. Her stomach grumbled again, annoyed, it seemed that she was talking about food and not putting any in her. In her belly, that is. Not anywhere else, that would be . . . fifty shades of really weird. She gradually realised that Oliver was biting his lips, and turning pink around the cheekbones.

"I said all that out loud, didn't I? Oh, this island. I have even less filter than usual."

He just half-smiled at her, and got up.

"Here, I'll get you one – I can heat it up for you." He hesitated, standing in front of the pile of MREs. "I'll get one for myself." His hands shook slightly as he reached out, and he managed to snag two. Looking at him closely, she realised he'd lost weight, and it wasn't like he had a lot of weight to lose, what with being solid muscle.

The food wasn't actually that bad, and there was coffee – sweet nectar of the gods, she thought, very well aware that if she hadn't been so hungry, she might have reacted differently. She caught herself in a huge yawn, and looked at her watch. It wasn't that late, but she just felt like she could sleep for a week. Oliver was looking at her intently, expression inscrutable as usual, and she wondered if tomorrow he'd be back to island trauma Oliver.

"No, I won't, Felicity. I promise. If by 'island trauma Oliver' you mean not speaking to anyone."

"Ugh," she said. "I better go to sleep because my filter is broken beyond repair right now. Wait a minute, what about you? Where are you going to sleep?"

He avoided her eyes, at first, then seemed to come to a decision, and looked straight at her – she'd missed his intense stares more than she'd thought.

"I haven't been sleeping . . . much. But there are blankets, and the ground, so I'll be ok. Go to sleep, Felicity. If it rains . . ."

"You'll wake me?" she asked sleepily, her eyes already closing, no matter how hard she tried to keep them open.

"You'll be woken by the waterfall hitting your face," he added in a tone of fond exasperation. But she was already more than half asleep, and couldn't be sure that's what he'd said.

When she woke up the next morning, she wasn't absolutely sure where she was, at first. Gradually, the sounds of strange birds, and rustling leaves filtered through her morning daze, and it all came back to her. Everything was sharp and clear, like she had been trapped in a fog for so long, and it had finally been dispersed. She sat up and wondered where Oliver was, and just as the thought came to her, he walked up, from the opposite direction to the beach. There was something different about him – it took her a few seconds to work it out. His hair was wet. Wait, what? His hair was wet?

"Oliver? Are you hiding a shower on the island?"

When, five minutes later, he showed her a beautiful inland lake, she spent a few seconds looking around her in awe. Then she gave him a sceptical look.

"I thought this was hell on earth, Oliver. Or at least, Purgatory on earth? Though why would it be called Purgatory anyway? Is there Purgatory in Buddhism? Back to the point, _it was five years, where nothing good happened!_ Remember that?"

He was looking at her with his mouth open.

"Felicity, did you memorize everything I ever said to you?"

"Stop deflecting, Oliver!"

He sighed, probably already regretting his promise to keep talking instead of turning back into the brood-master, she thought.

"Look, the first thing Yao Fei did was put an arrow in me. Then he saved me, but you know – arrow. And Slade tried to kill me, then became my brother, then went crazy and spent a week torturing me. And Shado was great, and then she died. And . . . "

He threw his hands in the air, as if to say his life was ridiculous and crazy, and it was too hard to explain how quickly things could go to shit here. Felicity caught his eye and nodded her understanding.

"Besides, I told you I didn't spend all my time on the island."

"I kind of guessed before that – I haven't noticed any tattoo parlours here, and you didn't have tattoos before."

He was looking at her with his eyebrow raised, and she lowered her eyes.

"I looked it up," she mumbled, embarrassed. He just shook his head.

"You'd be surprised where you can get tattooed, even if you don't want to," he said, but didn't add anymore. He pressed a bag into her hands – more army supplies. She almost moaned with pleasure when she saw soap, shampoo and toothpaste. She was glad the towel was rough and coarse, else she might have had an orgasm.

"But isn't this bad," she said, "for, um the environment?" She was desperately hoping for him to say no, because she was dying to brush her teeth. He rolled his eyes.

"We're two people. I think the lake can take it." He seemed to realise he was staring at her, and flushed. "I'll give you some privacy," he mumbled. "I'll be back in a half hour – I don't want you to go through the forest on your own."

He was true to his word, and soon he heard him coming through the forest towards her, making more noise than usual, which she figured was for her benefit. For a second she flashed back to Oliver the silent assassin, appearing in her bedroom like a ghost, and she shuddered, glad of this new, noisy Oliver. Not that she'd spent a long time luxuriating in the water, because the lake was ice-cold. It had taken her five minutes of muffled squeals to get herself waist-deep, and then she couldn't stay in it for long, before she started to shiver. So when he finally stomped up, she'd been out for ten minutes, desperately rubbing her arms to get the circulation going.

He looked at her, seeming worried.

"You look really cold, Felicity."

"Oh, it's ok, I'm sure the circulation will come back to my toes soon."

He smiled sideways at her, and found her a warm rock to sit on. It was nice to just sit, she realised, not have to worry about work, or vigilante stuff, or anything. She could just drift away, here. At some point she would have to tell Oliver that various incarnations of the Arrow had been seen around Starling City, so that it didn't look too suspicious when he came back and took up the suit again. If he wanted to come back, and if he wanted to put the leathers back on. There had even been a tiny female Arrow, and she _really_ wasn't sure how she was going to tell Oliver about that. She wasn't sure he would find Thea in the Arrow suit as adorable as she did. The best part had been relaying directions to Thea one night, when she'd come unexpectedly face to face with Captain Lance – his exasperated "Oh come on!" had been clearly audible over Thea's throat mike.

It was weird – when she was in Starling, she didn't care about any of this. She just put in her hours, and trudged home to her new apartment, spending hours lying awake, unable to sleep. She thought she'd ignored everything that had been happening around her, and it was all there, in her head.

Oliver had been sitting silently next to her, and she snuck a look at him under her lashes. He looked out over the lake, lost in memories, and she wished she could just hold his hand, touch his arm, something. They'd been so easy with each other in Nanda Parbat. Would they ever reach that stage again? He looked at her and smiled.

"I . . . I'm glad you're here with me . . . " he started, and Felicity had to bite down on an almost irrepressible desire to add, "here at the end of all things." Not now, pop culture brain, she said sternly, and managed to smile back at him. Good thing I didn't shoot you then, the more sarcastic part of her brain added, and she told that to shut up too.

"I usually go hunting right about now," he continued.

Felicity got up – she wasn't getting any warmer. Maybe the exercise would help.

"And I'm coming with you," she declared, determined not to take no for an answer.

He just nodded. His quiver was already on his back, and they dropped by the plane to get his bow.

A few hours later, sitting behind a bush, waiting for Oliver to take his shot, her mind drifted this way and that. Turns out hunting is incredibly boring if you aren't the one doing the actual hunting. And she drew a line at actually killing small furry animals. Her mind went to something she'd been thinking about in Starling City – well, here she was, with nothing to do, and Oliver was here too. No time like the present, right?

"I want you to teach me how to fight!"

In retrospect, her voice sounded really loud in the still forest. She watched, fascinated, as Oliver's fingers slipped on the string and the arrow flew off his bow, careening out of control, pinging against three trees before vanishing. Oliver raised his head and looked at the sky, seemingly pleading for patience. He looked at her and she mouthed, "sorry!", and he couldn't help a smile. He sat next to her and looked at her, considering.

"Before you say no, I'd like you to consider that maybe I'd like to be able to defend myself rather than wait for my Green Knight to rescue me. I'm tired of being a damsel."

"I wasn't going to say no, Felicity. And you're not a damsel."

Felicity beamed at him, wishing that all her arguments with Oliver ended this well.

The next few days seemed to pass quickly, as they fell into a routine. They washed separately, then she went hunting with him, though she looked away when he actually shot something. She'd never even suggested trying to use his bow – for one it would have to be adjusted to her strength, and besides, she didn't trust her aim. Nope, hand to hand was quite enough for her. And she still had her gun. Though that made her uneasy – she'd almost killed Oliver. The thought itself made her shudder, and she resolved to put it out of her mind. She managed to work on some programs in the afternoons, and soon filled a couple of notebooks with intricate code which she was dying to try out on an actual computer, and once again cursed herself for being so depressed she'd left all her tech behind. As for the fighting, Oliver told her about an open plain which he knew was landmine-free, and that's where they were going to train.

"I know you tried some sparring with Diggle . . . and Sara. But I'd like you to focus on blocking. And kicks."

Felicity wrinkled her forehead.

"Kicks, really? With these stumpy things?" She gestured at her legs, noticing that Oliver gave them a quick look before looking away, clearing his throat.

"Your legs aren't stumpy, Felicity. With sparring and punching you have to get too close, and you risk someone grabbing you. And, as a woman, most of your strength is in your . . . lower . . . body." He cleared his throat again.

"Especially your legs. So, kicks."

They spent an hour or so stretching and warming up, and the first few days were spent practising the blocks he taught her, and balancing. The leg drills he taught were surprisingly fun to learn, and she was surprised at her flexibility. Then he taught her the real thing – starting with a roundhouse kick. She never thought she was flexible enough to do that sort of thing, and she was amazed at what a few days of leg drills could do to improve that. He taught her a few more, but the roundhouse was her favourite, and by the end of the week, Oliver declared that she was ready to do some real sparring.

"Always keep your distance, Felicity. Only move in for the kick, and then, back out of reach. If you haven't connected, or not hard enough, you don't want anyone to grab you."

They were circling each other, and she had blocked a few of his punches – though she was sure that he was pulling them quite a bit. He was encouraging and patient, even as she wasn't sure which kick to start with. She tried a front kick to his calf, but he was never where he'd been a second earlier. He praised all her efforts anyway, and she managed to connect a few times. Then she remembered something he'd told Diggle when they were sparring, and decided to try it. She pretended she was moving out of a fighting stance to take a break, and just as Oliver started asking her if she wanted to rest, she planted one foot firmly in the ground, and swept the other in a wide arc towards his jaw. He saw her in the last fraction of a second, and moved back, managing to catch what would have been a fall in a normal person and making it a crouch.

Oliver beamed at her.

"That was amazing!"

"But I missed," she pouted.

"Next time, you won't. But not the face, please – there's nowhere here I can have my jaw wired shut."

"Oh, you just don't want anything ruining your pretty, pretty face," she scoffed, and was gratified to see that he couldn't hold back a smirk.

"I'm not pretty," he protested, pretending to be offended.

"Like a Ken doll," she added, and giggled when he mock-glared at her.

She went to sleep that night with a smile on her face, convinced that everything was going to be ok. She should have known it wasn't going to be that easy, she thought, as she woke up in the middle of the night, certain she had screamed herself awake. That had been the worst nightmare yet. Everything had been heightened and amplified, and made so much worse than what actually happened. She sat up and desperately tried to control the heaving in her stomach – she refused to let her body control her. Mind over matter, she repeated to herself. Come on, Felicity.

A canteen full of water appeared at her elbow – of course, it would have been too much to ask that she'd not wake Oliver up with her amateur dramatics.

"Felicity, don't do that. Don't run yourself down."

And she was back to babbling every thought out loud, too.

"And I haven't been sleeping that well – you didn't wake me."

She looked at him, crouched next to her cot – he looked tired, but still Oliver, not blank Sahim, so she felt reassured.

"I told you I want to get over this – I'm tired of being traumatised. And I don't want to keep talking about it either. I just want to be better already."

"Maybe it isn't that easy," he said. "Maybe you still need answers. Maybe . . . " he paused. The subject was obviously difficult for him. "Maybe I owe you answers."

Felicity thought about it. She'd meant it when she said she didn't want to keep going on and on about it. But maybe Oliver needed to talk about it, and perhaps it would help them both.

"Did you . . . tell anyone? Who knows about it? Besides the whole fricking League of Assassins, I mean. They probably put it in their blog."

She tried to pass it off as a joke, but her tone was too bitter for that. Great, Felicity. A swing and a miss. Oliver didn't even try to address the fact that assassins weren't generally known to be bloggers.

"Felicity, the only people who knew were R'as al Ghul, and the two guys who were with me that night. And they're all dead," he added darkly.

"Oh." Felicity was puzzled. "I know Nyssa killed dear old dad, but I thought all the other assassins got away, and went back to Nanda Parbat."

Oliver refused to meet her eyes.

"I killed them. The first thing I did when I got to Starling with the virus. If they hadn't been there that night, he . . . I . . . might have faked the whole thing. But they were there, and he didn't think they'd buy it. _I_ didn't think they'd buy it. Fuck," he muttered, rubbing his head.

Felicity thought about it for a while.

"So, that was why you . . . he . . . ugh. You know, the hitting, and the . . . "

She mimed tearing at her shirt, and his face fell. He nodded, looking destroyed, and she felt sorry for bringing it up. He seemed to remember something else.

"There was someone else who knew," he started tentatively. He snuck a look at her. "Nyssa."

Really? Great. Her humiliation was complete.

"Super cool Assassin Queen knows about the worst moment of my life. Brilliant. She probably thinks I should have chosen death," she continued, the bitterness dripping from her words. Oliver shook his head.

"No. Nyssa was beyond mad at me. I don't know who told her, maybe it was R'as, bragging how he managed to break me, but she seriously wanted to kill me. I persuaded her to kill her father instead."

Felicity couldn't hide her surprise. And she'd never really wondered why Nyssa had killed her father – she'd assumed it was because he'd practically disinherited her in favour of Oliver. Might as well know everything, she thought. Secrets have a habit of coming back and biting me on the ass.

"How did you persuade her, anyway?"

Oliver seemed to be regretting he'd said so much. He had that pained look on his face she remembered from the old days. It hadn't worked on her then, it wouldn't now. She raised her eyebrows.

"She was already pretty angry at R'as al Ghul. He kind of made us get married," he mumbled, so fast that she first thought she hadn't heard him right.

"What?"

She was pretty sure her shriek woke the forest up around her.

"It's over, Felicity," he continued, trying hard to suppress a smile.

"What?"

"ARGUS told me Nyssa had it annulled, as soon as she got rid of her father."

She was speechless.

"Why? I mean, why make you marry, not why did she have it anulled."

Oliver shrugged. "I seriously have no idea. I think R'as just wanted heirs. He kept talking about blood," he continued, as if it had just occurred to him. "I don't think I was ever really the heir, just a-"

"Stud?" Her voice was sharp. "And did you?" She waved her hands around in a vague gesture, which, come to think of it, looked like she was going for interpretive dance, rather than consummation.

He gave her one of his looks.

"Do not give me that look, Oliver!"

"Of course not, Felicity! Neither of us wanted it. I think she was as scared if him as I was – I wonder how she managed to kill him." He sounded puzzled, and his eyes were far away. Danger, Will Robinson. She wasn't going to let him go back there – it was over, and they were moving on, starting right now.

"Ok, fine. Fine! We never speak of this again, agreed?"

She held out his hand, and he shook it, bemused.

"And we're going back to Starling, together. No-"

She put her hand up, in a 'stop right there, mister' gesture, as he opened his mouth.

"I'm not taking no for an answer. I'm making you an offer you can't refuse. Screw you guys, we're goin' home. Oh come on," she added, as he looked befuddled. "It was five years on the island, not fifteen!"

He smirked.

"You're messing with me!"

He nodded, and she noticed he was still holding her hand. She didn't want to let go, either, and they sat in the plane and watched as the sky grew lighter, and the forest woke up around them.

On their last morning, they walked back to the beach in silence. It was a comfortable silence which got slightly tense as they got closer to the beach, and a return to Starling city. They waited for about an hour, not saying much, before Oliver lifted his head.

"I can hear it – a few minutes out, I think."

She couldn't hear anything, but she took his word for it. Ok, here goes nothing, she thought. She pulled at his arm to get his head closer – she wasn't wearing heels, and he towered over her. He angled towards her mouth, probably thinking she wanted to tell him something, and it was a simple matter to dart to the side and kiss him. His mouth stayed closed for a second, then it opened, and his arm curled around her back, pulling her up to him. She lost herself in his warm mouth, tasting his toothpaste and the coffee they'd shared, feeling something warm pool inside her as all her feelings for him came flooding back. They broke apart, slightly breathless, and the hope in his eyes was almost painful to see. The bitter, damaged part of her wanted to throw his words back in his face – maybe one day, maybe never. But that was the self-sabotaging part of her, the part that didn't forgive. And she wasn't going to give in to it. As she smiled at him, the noise of the helicopter grew louder until it was right on top of them.

There was only a pilot on board, and he told them he'd been instructed to take them straight to Palmer Technologies. He also gave Felicity her mobile phone, and she spent a couple of minutes cooing over it happily, ignoring Oliver's smirk.

"Oh, my baby! Did you miss me? I can't believe I left you behind."

She lost herself in her backlog of emails, answering the more urgent ones. She'd decided she wasn't going to tell Oliver about the company yet. More secrets – something she wasn't particularly happy about. But there was enough Oliver wasn't going to like – Thea going out nightly in Roy's suit, for one, when she wasn't patrolling in a tiny version of the new Arrow suit. Let's go slow, she thought.

It was full night once they started approaching the city, and the lights looked breath-taking in the gloom. They landed on the helipad, and in a few seconds, the helicopter was gone. Any minute now, the door to the roof will burst open, and Thea and Diggle would run out, glad to see Oliver again at last, she thought. When the door did open, what came out was more unexpected.

"Who ordered the SWAT team?"

Her words came out in a horrified whisper, like she was in a nightmare, one of those where you try to scream and nothing comes out.

As if on cue, the chopping sound of helicopter blades descended on them, and a spotlight lit up the helipad.

"This is the Starling City Police! Oliver Queen, you are under arrest! Put your hands on your head! Get on your knees!"

The voice blared down at them, and with every word Oliver's eyes grew wilder and more frantic. No, no, no, she wasn't going to lose him now, not after all this!

"Oliver! Oliver, look at me!"

Felicity wasn't sure he heard her in the confusion – the circling helicopter, the wind, the noise. But he looked at her, hunted.

"Do everything they say," she yelled, fighting against the noise. "Don't say a word! Just ask for a lawyer, and then don't speak!"

He looked at her for a long second, completely blank, and then nodded, almost imperceptibly. He dropped to his knees and put his hands on his head, waiting for the SWAT team to rush past her and cuff him, before pulling him up, and dragging him towards the roof door. One of them was an officer in uniform, who was yelling in his ear – she hoped it was the Miranda warning, and not something to provoke him into making a break for it. The team leader handed her the arrest warrant and she took it, wordlessly, her eyes still on Oliver, who was being pushed into the stairwell. The helicopter vanished, and she was left alone on the helipad, a sheet of paper in her hand. The useless tears threatened to break out, and she blinked them back, angrily. No crying, dammit. She'd thought they were done being the butt of the universe's joke. She'd obviously been wrong about that. Back to the drawing board, she thought, as she took out her phone and started making the calls.


	4. the city, not long after

There had been a moment, on the roof of Palmer Technologies, when Oliver wanted to put them all down, the entire SWAT team. If Felicity hadn't been there, he would have tried. And got your damn fool head blown off, he could hear Felicity saying. And she would be right. So he let them cuff him, and drag him down to their waiting van. For a moment he felt a sense of disconnect –hadn't he done this already? But this time they were real police, and he was taken to SCPD, not ARGUS. They went in through the parking garage, and he was thankful for that.

The uniformed cop had been there to read him his rights, and he wondered why it hadn't been Captain Lance, who was obviously behind this new arrest. Maybe Lance didn't want to seem like he was on a vendetta, even though he clearly was.

But that didn't matter – he had to stay focused and alert, and above all, silent. Felicity was right, and he needed to trust her judgement more often. The whole process of taking his picture and his prints passed by him in a whirl. As they led him into the bullpen, and cuffed him to a desk, his thoughts were of that kiss she had given him, back on the island. Did she really forgive him? How was it even possible, after what he'd done?

He was brought to the present by someone snapping their fingers in his face. He looked up, and the tiny bit of pride he had left brightened when he managed to stop himself from flinching or pulling back. Captain Lance. Of course.

"Hope we're not disturbing you, Queen. You're charged with breaking and entering, and industrial espionage."

Breaking and entering? They sent a SWAT team for that? He was glad, once again, that Felicity had told him to keep quiet. He could sense that Lance was dying for him to say something, and dig the hole deeper.

"Lawyer."

"What?"

Lance looked like he was going to slap him, like he did in the van, back when he turned himself in. What's the matter, captain, too many witnesses? So Lance still thought of him as a trust-fund douchebag, did he? He was fine with that.

"Lawyer." He made sure to enunciate, in his most obnoxious, cop-baiting tone.

"That won't be necessary," a voice said from above his head. "We'd like to speak to our client in private, please."

He looked up, and saw three intimidating, power-suited people looking down at him – he recognized them, but couldn't remember the names. Hadn't they been on retainer for Queen Consolidate? Probably, they'd been kept on by Palmer Technologies. Why were they there to help him, though? He sure as hell couldn't afford that kind of law firm anymore. He opened his mouth to speak, only to get the kind of look he'd last seen on a Great White, and closed it again. Grumbling a little, Lance released him from the desk, without uncuffing his hands, and he followed the lawyers to the interrogation room. When they'd all trooped in, the youngest looking lawyer took great pleasure in shutting the door in Lance's face.

"Irving Weissmann, Mr Queen. We're from Sherman, Weismann and Dunne."

The oldest of them, a distinguished looking man in his sixties, gave Oliver his card, and he found it hard to hide his shock. One of the senior partners was here for him? Who was paying for all this? His puzzlement must have shown all over his face.

"Mr. Queen, we've been retained by Palmer Technologies to clear up this mess. Ms Varman called our office personally to ensure your immediate release."

Oliver still felt a bit dazed after the last few hours, and the noise and confused activity of the police station was starting to cause a serious sensory overload. His mind latched onto the latest mystery.

"Ms Varman?"

"Oh, yes. We forgot you haven't been in Starling for a while. Ms Varman is the new CEO of Palmer Technologies. She seems very invested in your wellbeing. But we really need to get down to business. Let's start with what you can tell us about this arrest."

Oliver sighed. A few hours ago he'd been on a remote island littered with landmines. He was starting to miss it.

"Captain Lance said that the charges were breaking and entering, and industrial espionage. I didn't know that merited a SWAT team." Something occurred to him, and his expression must have changed.

One of the junior lawyers, who'd introduced herself as Meredith Downey, nodded sympathetically.

"Yes, we believe this is another part of Captain Lance's campaign to see you charged with being the Arrow. Or if not that, charged with anything, as long as it gets you a custodial sentence."

Oliver couldn't care less about that – he was more worried that his arrest had been filmed, and would once more be splashed all over TV screens for the latest news cycle.

"The media are going to be all over this," he mumbled.

What was the matter with him? Usually he was more reticent. He'd gotten too comfortable during the last two weeks with Felicity – this had to stop. Not the comfort with Felicity – their relationship was so fragile at the moment, he felt like breathing wrong would shatter it. No, this new blabbermouth Oliver had to zip it up. These weren't his friends. He was in the shark-infested waters around Lian Yu, and if he wasn't careful, he'd be swallowed whole. This time it was the senior partner who spoke.

"Do _not_ worry about that. We have already been in touch with all the local media outlets. They've all been served with cease and desist orders, as well as instructions to hand over all footage recorded during your arrest. No one likes a lawsuit, Mr Queen."

What the hell? While he and Palmer hadn't been enemies at the end, they'd hardly been best buds. And now he was doing his best to protect Oliver – what was going on? Though the speculation was kind of pointless – and anyway, he needed to get out of there. If they could make it happen, more power to them.

"Mr Queen, why don't you tell us what happened to you after your arrest and release – and please try to keep as close to the truth as possible."

Ah, so they were realistic lawyers. Good thing he'd spent some time with Felicity working on a story. The problem was that none of them knew what Lance had on him – and he must have _something_ , because the SWAT team and the helicopter must have destroyed the department's budget for this year.

"About a week after my release, I was kidnapped by a . . . cult. They made me do things for them. I managed to get out, and went through exit counselling. After that I needed some time alone, so I spent the last six weeks on a remote island in the North China Sea. A . . . friend persuaded me to return."

The two younger lawyers were taking frantic notes – which was weird as he'd not said that much. Weismann just looked at Oliver intently. None of it was actually a lie. The league of assassins was a cult, to all intents and purposes. They'd practically killed Thea to draw him in. He didn't mention the brainwashing, because he knew, thanks to Felicity, that it was a pretty thorny legal issue. He remembered mentioning Patty Hearst, and got one of those exasperated, why-are-you-so-stupid, Felicity looks which, if he was being really honest, made him as happy as he ever got. _Oliver, Patty Hearst got jail-time. The only way she got out was money, which you don't have anymore. Oh, and a presidential pardon!_

"Mr Queen, do you have any proof of maltreatment, or coercion, by this so-called cult?"

He rubbed over his face, unwilling to show them the only proof he had. He felt strangely ashamed at what he'd let the league do to him, and that was before he'd been brainwashed.

"They . . . branded me. With a hot iron. They threatened . . . it could get worse."

Weismann nodded, as if he heard this kind of thing every day.

"May we see it?"

His tone was surprisingly gentle. Oliver suddenly realised that he'd met Weismann before, at a family dinner. He was probably comparing the cocky asshole Oliver had been with the broken man he was now. In his head he could hear Felicity yelling at him. _You're not broken, Oliver! Just bruised, right?_

He turned away from the lawyers and lifted his t-shirt to expose his shoulder, unwilling to strip in front of strangers, both in the room and whoever was watching through the two-way glass. It reflected like a mirror, and he could see their faces change colour as they saw the large brand on his back. Not the partner, though. His face just tightened a little, and he nodded.

"I see. If necessary, a medical professional will be able to confirm that the . . . mark is as old as you say, and with its location on your back, no-one can say it was self-inflicted."

He gave his associate an inquiring look, and she nodded.

"Now, I believe we must invite Captain Lance in and see what they have."

Downey went to the door to call Lance, but it opened as soon as she got up, and Lance, another detective, and a uniformed cop came in.

"Good, we can settle this quickly. Now, I would like to know why my client has been brought in – I sense that we are heading towards a wrongful arrest suit in the near future."

"Well, you sense wrong, counselor."

Lance looked pleased, and Oliver cringed inwardly, though thanks to the glass, he knew he hadn't changed expression. He was getting back into survival mode, and he needed it more than ever. Lance opened a laptop on the desk, and pressed play on a video which turned out to be security camera footage. Oliver watched, horrified, as an assassin version of him fought Nyssa on a rooftop, forcing her down, and putting a blade to her neck. Something off-screen distracted him, and he had a sudden flash of memory: Laurel, with her revamped sonic weapon, and Diggle, with a more prosaic pistol, forcing him to stop. His cowl was off, as was his mask, so there was absolutely no doubt it was him. Especially as he made sure to stare right into the camera. When had he turned into such a moron? Years of forest and urban survival, and he let his face be caught on camera? There hadn't been so much as a blurry cell phone video in his past years of vigilante activity – and now this. A snort from Downey caught his attention. At a nod from the senior partner, she started to speak.

"I don't know what this is supposed to be showing us, Captain. My client and a female associate are obviously doing some cosplay, and their friends must be filming them off camera."

Captain Lance rolled his eyes, an expression of disgust on his face.

"Sure, sure. Cosplay, whatever that is. No, don't explain it to me, I'll ask one of the hackers we arrested yesterday. Tell me, how do you explain _this_ video of your client, dressed in the exact same outfit, breaking into Park Laboratories, restraining the staff, and, according to the owners, destroying company property?"

He then pressed play on a second video, and Oliver braced himself. And yes, he was wearing the same costume, but with a difference – his mask and cowl were on. And he never even looked at a camera.

"May I consult with my client?"

Lance nodded, and Oliver bent towards the senior partner.

"Now we're going to pretend we're discussing something very important, so nod a few times. That's good. As I thought, they have nothing. I assume your face was hidden the entire time, and your gloves were on?" Oliver nodded again, this time for a reason. "Excellent. Even eye-witness testimony will be tainted."

As the senior partner turned to Captain Lance, Oliver tuned out the ensuing argument about lack of evidence and false eye-witness testimony, only nodding when asked if he would submit to a line-up. He was lost in his own thoughts – why were they saying he destroyed company property? The only property he'd destroyed had been the Alpha/Omega, and that didn't belong to the laboratory he'd broken into. Wait a second, he thought, had they said Park? Didn't Park belong to Stellmoor? Great, just great. Stellmoor must have a stooge in SCPD, and that's all they needed, even a hint that Oliver Queen was ripe to be fucked with. The whole Isabel Rochev debacle had ensured that he and Stellmoor were enemies for life.

He got up when ordered to, and his cuffs were taken off in preparation for the line-up. Was it the engineer who'd destroyed the virus for him? He was surprised, at first. The man seemed to understand what had to be done, and why. Yes, but if the CEO of Stellmoor came along and told him to toe the party line, or else, he couldn't really blame him for doing what was necessary to keep his job.

Standing in the line-up was surreal. He was sure he'd seen the last man on his right before, and mentally added an SCPD uniform. Yes, that was a patrolman he'd seen pretty often on the North Side. He stepped forward, and, when asked, he said a few words. He was sure that wasn't what he'd said that night. Maybe the engineer really didn't want to implicate him. Just as the thought came to him, a voice blared out over the loudspeaker.

"Ok everyone, we're done."

The other men started filing out of the room, and Oliver wondered if that meant him too. He walked out, straight into a yelling match between his lawyers and Captain Lance. The engineer from that night was there, looking sheepish – apparently he'd identified the off-duty cop as the person in the video.

"Are you telling me," Captain Lance had a vein on the side of his neck which looked like it was about to pop, "that two different men, on two separate occasions, wore the exact same costume? One which is unavailable at any Starling City costume outlet?"

"I understand from my young colleague that these 'cosplayers'," the senior partner pronounced the word in way that made it sound like some kind of exotic perversion, "are both talented and versatile enough to produce their own costumes. Unless you have some other proof, I think we will be leaving, with our client."

Captain Lance looked like he wished he had mountains of evidence, but shook his head, and walked away. Oliver felt ill. It was hard to see Lance like this, hating him with such intensity. At the same time, a feeling of resentment started to grow in him. Yes, he'd been a douchebag. And he'd talked Sara into getting on the Queen's Gambit. And sure, he'd accept responsibility. But he'd paid, and paid, and now he'd had enough. He would have done the time for Roy. But now that Roy was gone, he wasn't going to accept prison for any other reason except to protect his friends and family. As he left, still slightly dazed, he could hear the engineer protesting that he'd never seen the guy's face. He hoped the engineer wouldn't get into trouble for this.

Once they got to the parking garage, he saw Felicity leaning against her car. The lawyers all shook his hand, and walked off towards a huge town car. He headed towards Felicity, noticing that she looked really guilty. He was just about to ask her what was wrong, when she burst out with something that had obviously been on her mind.

"Oliver, I'm so sorry! It's all my fault. The arrest, I mean. I was such an idiot."

She looked so upset that he wanted to reassure her, but he wasn't sure what he should do – sure she had kissed him before they left the island, but could he still hold her like he used to? He compromised by putting his hand on her shoulder, lightly, ready to take it off as soon as she flinched, but she didn't. She just kept looking at him with the same apologetic expression on her face.

"What do you mean?"

"I sent you – I mean him – I mean whatever – to Park Labs. I didn't even think about Stellmoor. I just didn't-"

" – want to see me. Because at the new applied sciences at Palmer, you have an autoclave too."

She nodded, miserably, sliding a glance at his face, to see how he was taking it. He actually didn't feel too bad. The whole experience of being arrested and dragged away in cuffs had finally woken him up from his post-ARGUS stupor. Watching the lawyers' battle of wits with Captain Lance had been good in that Lance couldn't really haul off and tell him what he really thought of him, with so many people around. And they hadn't been able to hold him, so no harm done.

"Hey. It's fine, Felicity. You had every right not to want me close by, whoever I was at the time."

She put her hand on his and he inhaled sharply. He still found it hard to believe that he had her forgiveness, and every time she touched him he felt better about it.

"I just don't get why Palmer is helping me like this," he mused. He didn't miss the guilty look Felicity flashed him before becoming more guarded.

"I . . . guess he's a philanthropist?" Felicity sounded like she wished she'd come up with a better explanation, but Oliver had already decided to let it go, for now. She'd tell him when she was ready.

"Come on, Oliver. Let's go home."

"Where's that exactly?" he said, stifling a yawn. His exhaustion rolled over him without warning. Come on, he told himself. Just a bit longer. Maybe then you can get some sleep.

"Thea's place, of course!" Felicity sounded shocked and afraid. "Don't you remember where you used to live?"

"Of course I remember. Just that the last time I saw Thea . . ."

She'd been shooting an arrow into his arm. An _arrow_ . Fucking Malcolm Merlyn, he thought angrily. I should have let Diggle empty a clip in his head. They were driving through the darkened city streets by then, and he recognized the neighbourhood.

"Didn't you see her when ARGUS arrested you? After the arrowing, I mean. Which really seems to have bothered you, Oliver. You seriously need to get over it."

Felicity sounded sharp. She knew what really bothered him was the weapon, not the fact that it landed in his arm, and she was probably winding up for a lecture on agency, and strong, powerful women, and how he was not the boss of them. He smiled at her, but she was concentrating on the road and didn't see it. He had no problem with strong, powerful women – he'd been brought up by Moira Queen. His difficulty lay in accepting his little sister, someone whose braids he could remember tying off, as a fighter and, he was starting to suspect, night-time vigilante.

"I'm trying, Felicity," he said easily, and she finally looked at him, nodding at him, and smiling. They pulled up in front of Thea's. Did he really want to go in there? Who else would be there? Did they really forgive him, or was that only Felicity?

He realised how wrong he'd been when he walked through the door to Thea's apartment. There was a loud shriek and a small figure threw herself at Oliver, latching onto him and sobbing into his shoulder.

"Hey, Speedy," Oliver said, trying to keep his tone light, though he had to blink hard a couple of times. Diggle was leaning against a table with his arms folded, but he was smiling at Oliver, and he reached around Thea, holding his hand out for him to shake. He could see Laurel sitting on the back of the couch, smiling, and Oliver grinned at her. Thea finally let him go, and punched his arm.

"Why didn't you come straight back, you jerk? I was so worried about you!"

"I'm sorry, Thea. I-"

Oliver found it difficult to push the words out.

"I thought I burned my bridges . . . with all of you," he said, and his look around the room included Diggle and Laurel.

"Come on, man," Diggle said, an easy smile on his face. "It wasn't you."

Laurel looked like she was going to disagree, but then she closed her mouth, looking at Felicity. By the time _he_ looked at Felicity, she had an innocent expression on her face. He didn't need defending, dammit – he wanted to apologise to everyone. Even if it hadn't been him, and it hadn't, he was the one who decided to go to Nanda Parbat in the first place. Knowing what he did now, he should have grabbed everyone close to him and gone on the run. Well, hindsight was useless. Time to move forward, he decided, and opened his mouth to say as much. His body had other ideas, and any words he wanted to say were swallowed by a huge yawn. Diggle laughed, and shook his head.

"Man, you are _beat_. Tomorrow, or," he added, looking at his watch, "later today, we can talk about why'd they arrest you this time. But now you need to get some sleep."

That seemed to be the signal for everyone who didn't live there to start filing out, with the last being Felicity. He held out his hand, and she squeezed it, making his breath catch. Whatever small thing was reborn on the island was still alive. There was still hope. Thea had been watching this little interaction, he realised, but she didn't say anything, just grabbed him for a hug.

"Come on, Ollie. I made up your bed, for the first and last time."

He laughed.

"Are you gonna tuck me in?"

"Is it going to keep you here?" He nodded, still smiling. "Then yes. Jerkface."

She didn't tuck him in, but did fuss over the pillows. He was too tired to take anything off except his shoes, and so he fell into the bed fully dressed. He'd thought it would take him hours to fall asleep in a bed, but he was soon dropping off. The last thing he registered was Thea's hand stroking his face, and her voice, murmuring.

"You will _never_ burn your bridges with me, Ollie. _Never_."

He woke up a few times during the day, once to go to the bathroom, another time to drink some water, reflecting on how quickly he managed to get used to civilised living again. As he staggered up the stairs from the kitchen, he winced at how weak he felt. He needed to get in shape again, and fast. But for now, sleep. At one point he either had a strange dream, or Lance was really downstairs arguing loudly with his sister. The voices kept mixing in with his dreams, so that occasionally, it was Roy speaking in Lance's voice, or Felicity in Thea's.

 _"How can you keep defending him, after he got your boyfriend killed?" Lance sounded really angry, even though Oliver knew that wasn't what he was angry about._

 _"You know something? I'm not listening to you anymore. And I'm going to tell you the truth about yourself. I hate doing this to you because Laurel's a friend, but you've harassed my brother for the last time."_

 _He'd never heard Thea sound so cold, even when she was acting like she hated him. He missed what Lance mumbled in reply, but Thea was loud enough that every word she said was distinct._

 _"No, you need to calm down, and leave us alone. The only reason you keep harassing Oliver about Roy's death, is that you know you're the one who's responsible. You accepted his confession, you painted a target on his back, and put him in gen pop! You put the Arrow, a vigilante who'd arrested half the people in Iron Heights, in general population, just to draw out my brother. You. Killed. Roy."_

 _After this, Oliver tried really hard to get up, but his exhaustion paralysed him. What if Lance was wearing a wire? Again, he couldn't hear what Lance was saying, but Thea came through loud and clear._

 _"Oliver will do what he likes, and wear what he likes too. You have no idea what he gave up, what he's been through to save all our lives. To save yours too! And if you bother him in any way, you should know that his girlfriend can erase you from existence; your job, your rank, your salary, your retirement, gone. Just. Like. That."_

 _A pause, and her reply._

 _"No, that's not a threat. It's a promise. Goodbye, Captain Lance."_

When he woke up for the third time, it was a real awakening, not just a sleep-drunk stumble to the bathroom or kitchen. He stared at the ceiling for a few minutes, going through his daily list. Thea was alive. Diggle was alive. Laurel was alive. Felicity was . . . alive. Thea had left his mobile phone next to the bed, and it said 5:30am. He'd slept a whole day away, after six weeks on Lian Yu, sleeping a few hours a night. In the shower, he luxuriated in the feeling of hot water cascading over him. He'd forgotten what it felt like. Having washed what seemed like the grime of an entire island off, he looked at himself in the mirror. His hair was longer than he liked it nowadays, and what Lance had called his "scruff" was well on the way to a full beard. He decided he'd shave it all off, in the spirit of a new beginning. Or something like that. He looked in the bathroom shelf and was amazed to see that Thea had kept all his shaving gear, so he started lathering up. Some time later, looking at his clean-shaven face in the mirror, he winced. This made him look so _young_. Oh well, it would only be a day or two before it grew back. The bathroom door was open, so when he heard Thea's bedroom opening, he quickly wrapped a towel around his waist. Thea was yawning and stumbling her way towards the bathroom.

"Hey Ollie, get dressed and I'll take you to get some breakfast – there's a diner in the Glades has eggs you wouldn't believe-"

The next thing he heard behind him was a shriek. He whipped around to see Thea covering her mouth, looking at him in horror.

"Your back, Ollie! What did they do to you?"

The brand, again. Maybe he should have a viewing party, so everyone would get over it at the same time. He'd forgotten it was there, mostly. But he was probably lying to himself, if he said it didn't bother him. Getting it had been the worst pain he'd ever felt, and what made it worse was that he hadn't even been able to scream. It was probably then that he'd started to doubt the great plan of breaking the league from within.

"Hey, hey. Come on. It really doesn't hurt anymore."

"After breakfast we're going to a doctor. Or the emergency room."

Thea had tears shining in her eyes as she shooed him out of the bathroom. Oliver wasn't averse to having it looked at, though. The league hadn't wanted it treated because it would never keep the shape if it healed. His stomach churned slightly as he remembered getting it, the unbelievable pain, and worst of all, the smell of his own burning flesh. He pushed the memories aside and decided to get dressed. When he looked in his wardrobe, he was once again surprised to find everything as he'd left it, and after he was dressed in clean clothes, he felt like himself again.

Sitting in the diner, with Thea, was like another homecoming. She fussed over him, pushing food onto his plate, looking worried when he could only eat a small portion. He couldn't help smiling at her, and she grew flustered.

"What? What is it? Ollie!"

"You're acting like mom again." He tried to sound annoyed, but knew he was smiling at her.

She laughed, and kept pushing things on his plate.

"Was Lance there or was it another nightmare I had?"

"Oh, it was real." She sounded annoyed. "I'm sorry we woke you."

" _That's not a threat, it's a promise?_ "

"I always wanted to say that to someone!"

"Thea . . . " He tried to sound disapproving. "What if he was wearing a wire?"

"Please. Like anyone's interested in his personal vendetta anymore. I hope they take the cost of using the helicopter out of his salary."

"Speedy . . ."

"I'm just tired of all this, Oliver. I'm tired of everyone trying to take you away from me. And _you_ have to stop sacrificing yourself for me."

Oliver shook his head, staring to the side, trying to marshal his thoughts.

"Don't ask me to do that, Thea."

Thea had tears in her eyes, and brushed at them, impatiently. She sniffed a couple of times. Truth to be told, he felt slightly teary-eyed too. They continued eating, and he realised he was actually hungrier than he'd thought. They spent the rest of their meal in a comfortable silence, until Oliver realised she'd been looking at her watch a lot.

"Are we waiting for someone?"

"Felicity said she'd meet us here – she wanted to give us brother-sister bonding time, but there's things she needed to discuss."

And she didn't want to do it on her own with me, he thought sadly. Though they'd been on their own on the island, so maybe it hadn't been that. Thea looked at him, curiously.

"Oliver, what happened between you and Felicity?"

He looked at her, trying to reconcile his memory of the little girl he'd left behind and the grown woman she now was. She could never know the truth of what her brother was capable of. He needed to leave her with some illusions about him.

"Thea, that's not my secret to tell." He saw the disappointment in her face, and tried to lessen it, somehow. "I . . . hurt her. When I was under the influence of the league. I felt like I had no choice, but that doesn't excuse what I did . . ."

"And I have forgiven you for that," an annoyed voice directly overhead said. He looked up to see Felicity standing in front of their booth, arms folded. The annoyance in her eyes didn't lessen the fact that just seeing her made him happier than he'd been in a long time. She rolled her eyes at his probably ridiculous expression, and he smiled. Thea shook her head, and laughed.

"I thought we were over this, Oliver," Felicity continued, sternly. "The subject is closed." She pushed on his shoulder. "Now budge up, I'm starving."

"Is there room for one more?"

Oliver looked up again, this time at Diggle's smiling face. He still couldn't believe that he'd been so easily forgiven for what he'd done to Lyla, and how badly it could have gone with Sara. But Diggle was here, and Felicity was here. So maybe they could get back what they'd lost, somehow. Oliver explained what had happened at SCPD while the others ate, and he let them get angry at what they saw as Lance's vendetta. He was surprised when he found out that Diggle was working at Palmer, as a security consultant. Felicity, trying to sound casual, mentioned that she could probably get Oliver some kind of consulting work, too, but Oliver declined. In the elevator down to the SCPD parking garage, Weismann had made an appointment with him, to discuss what he called "the management of your late mother's assets", and Oliver realised that he wasn't as broke as he'd thought. He didn't tell the others that, just hinted that he'd get by somehow, and Thea acted like she was going to help him. He'd already told Thea about the money, and she herself was fine with the revenue she got from Verdant. He'd tell Felicity and Diggle later, he thought. He'd never been embarrassed about money before – it took seeing how normal people lived, without a safety net, to make him reluctant to flaunt his wealth.

The next months passed by in phases, which was a welcome change from the aimless days on the island. Much of that was caused by Felicity organizing his time. Left to his own devices, he felt he probably would have drifted through Starling City like some kind of restless ghost. A few days after his return, Felicity had asked him to come visit her at the front office of the Applied Science division of Palmer Technologies. As soon as he arrived, he was steered through a door with a biometric lock (he'd have thought that retinal scans were overdoing it, but Felicity was all about the security nowadays) to find their new 'Arrow cave', as he still wasn't calling it. As his leathers were now the property of the SCPD, Cisco had apparently designed a new suit, made of a special microfiber which had the shielding properties of leather but none of its disadvantages. And the hood had been redesigned too, to allow for better peripheral vision. He allowed himself a pang of regret for having let the police get their hands on Yao Fei's hood, and then let it go. There were other problems to be dealt with. The number of green suits on display, for one.

"Felicity, why are there four Arrow suits here?"

Felicity looked shifty.

"Spares?"

"None of them are the same size! And the smallest one looks like it was designed for a – Thea?"

Felicity opened her mouth to speak and shut it again. She fixed a determined look on her face and glared at him.

"Actually, Thea's suit is the red one, over there," she said, pointing to a case he had missed. Weren't those Roy's leathers? "She only wears the green one when we're doing the 'Let's all be the Arrow, so no-one will notice when Oliver pulls his head out his ass and comes back to the crusade which was his idea in the first place'," she concluded defiantly, and then added the word which she'd forgotten, "um, masquerade? Dance?"

He rubbed his face, and tried to hold on to his anger. But she was right. He'd left them all in the shit, and if he tried to come back as the Arrow, at the same time that Oliver Queen came back, they'd be in even worse trouble.

"Please don't tell me you gave Laurel a bow and arrow," he added mildly, trying to make Felicity smile.

She sniffed, unwilling to be mollified.

"As if. It was bad enough having to listen to hours of comms talk about green not being her colour, and hoods being stupid. Look, are you going to be mad and broody about this whole 'Thea, the littlest vigilante' thing? Because she was itching for something to do when you vanished into the wilds of the Hindukush, and trying to do good is a lot better than the kind of outlets her father would provide."

Oliver nodded, unwillingly. She was right.

"She's just so young," he said, when he registered what else she'd said. "Broody? I'm broody, now?"

"You're the broodMeister," she answered, smirking at him. "You'd win the gold medal for brooding. You could brood for your _country_." He grinned, despite himself. "Oh look at that, a smile! Now you've been disqualified, sorry. And Thea is old enough to vote. And join the _marines_ , if she wanted to. So you're lucky all she wants to do is wear a mask and patrol the streets. And if you think that I don't have her suits GPS'd out the wazoo, you don't know me at all. There are _routers_ in her suits. I could run my apartment's wifi through those things."

Oliver was in awe of her. He wanted to hold her so badly it hurt. He was doing that rubbing thing with his fingers which he knew she found annoying, but which helped him ease his tension, and at the moment, control his impulse to sweep her up and kiss her breathless. She seemed to see the struggle on his face, and she went serious, approached him slowly and stood close to him, standing on tiptoes to reach his mouth. She kissed him, and fireworks exploded in his brain. How had he ever thought he could live without her? He opened his mouth and she licked inside it, and he lost himself in the warmth of her kiss. He put his arms around her, loosely, giving her plenty of space, but she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him down to her. He kissed her again, and crushed her against him, tangling his hands in her hair, rubbing her back, and licking into her mouth. He never wanted to stop kissing her, but the sound of the door locks disengaging made them break apart, breathless. He couldn't stop smiling. Felicity looked rumpled, and his pants felt three times tighter than when he'd walked in.

"Are we interrupting something?"

Thea sounded especially wicked, but Felicity just rolled her eyes, mouthing 'no'. Diggle brought up the rear, grinning, and Laurel was the last to come in. It hadn't escaped his notice that the Canary suit had its own display case. But the police had burst into the foundry without a problem, ignoring the lock in favour of a battering ram, so wasn't this all really dangerous? He'd ask Felicity later. For now, he was curious as to what this was.

"Is this an intervention?" he asked mildly.

"Wow, Ollie, you were always the smartest of us all."

He wondered if it would do more harm than good if he asked his sister to stop calling him Ollie. Even Laurel called him Oliver nowadays.

"No, man." Diggle sounded as easy-going as he had in the diner, and maybe Oliver should just accept that.

"We just wondered when the Arrow would be coming back out with us, is all."

Oliver gave a significant look to the four suits on display, and Thea had the grace to blush.

"Look, I know you did all this to make it easier for me to come back, to get back what R'as al Ghul took from me."

He was proud that his voice didn't crack on the name, and simultaneously ashamed that was what he counted as a victory nowadays. "And I'm really thankful. And I _am_ coming back. But . . . I'm _so_ out of shape right now."

He realised they hadn't been expecting that, and the look on Diggle's face showed that he knew how much it cost Oliver to admit it. Felicity was the one who voiced what the others were thinking. Maybe only the first part, though.

"What? You look like you're in great shape! And on the island, you were fine. I don't mean _fine_ fine, I mean _fine_. What I saw of you, that is. Because maybe the parts I didn't see are unfit. Not parts! Oh, someone mute me, please."

Oliver was trying hard to restrain his smile. He'd missed hearing Felicity babble – even on the island, she hadn't been her normal self.

"Felicity, all I did on the island was some archery."

He didn't mention that before Felicity arrived, some days he just never bothered moving from the cargo plane. He'd been amazed when Felicity had told him he'd been there for a month, because he'd lost so many days staring into space.

"And a bit of sparring with you. It's hardly the kind of workout I used to do here. I need . . . a few weeks, to get into shape. Can you give me that?"

"Sure, but where are you going to do that? You can hardly join a gym."

Laurel sounded especially pleased at the last part – he sensed he had some bridges to rebuild with her, and he'd better start soon.

"Thea, what's the situation with the foundry? Does it belong to the cops now, is it a crime scene, what?"

Thea smiled.

"They wanted to hang on to it, but after I threatened to sue the SCPD and the city , they released it."

Oliver was puzzled.

"What were you going to sue for?"

"I had a list, Ollie. Starting with your false arrest, freezing my assets, harassing you, and a little matter of Roy's wrongful death. So many lawsuits, so little time," Thea concluded dreamily, using humour to cover her very real anger over what had happened to Roy, how they'd had to fake his death. Even if Roy hadn't been the love of her life, she missed him.

"Why, are you going train there?"

"I've got all my equipment there – everything is set up just right, and I can do the kind of training I need without people becoming curious why Oliver Queen needs to do parkour." Diggle nodded, agreeing, and even Laurel seemed reluctantly impressed.

"I wanted to go there tomorrow and clear up, a little – you're all welcome to come and spar with me." He was careful to include Laurel in his statement, and Felicity, who seemed especially happy to be included. He stayed in with Felicity at the monitors that first night, and if his fists were clenched the entire time, waiting for Thea to get into trouble, he hid it as best he could.

The next morning he got up early and headed to the foundry. And so his getting-back-in-shape month started. From the time when he used to own Verdant, he knew where the cleaning supplies were, and took them down into the foundry with him. He'd told Thea there was no point in putting in another electronic lock, and there really wasn't. The foundry would just become a gym, and there was no reason to hide a gym. What had been their headquarters was in a sorry state. All the electronics were gone, and the glass cases were all at Palmer Technologies, but that wasn't it. The place just looked abandoned and sad. That was ridiculous, he told himself firmly. He needed a place to train, and this would be fine.

He was in the middle of mopping the floor, after having cleared away the office furniture and swept up, when a voice interrupted him.

"Oliver Queen, doing housework. I must be hallucinating."

Well, he'd thought he needed to mend things with Laurel. Here was his chance.

"For an encore, I do laundry."

He risked a glance and saw that he'd managed to get a laugh out of her.

"I've come to take you up on your kind offer to spar. Seeing as you never wanted to before, and my sparring partner is thousands of miles away, thanks to _you_ -"

"Seriously?" How long was she going to keep going with this? He let his annoyance bleed into his voice. "Laurel, one day you're going to have to-" He looked up at her and noticed she was smirking. "What?"

"I was wondering when the real Oliver was going to come out – I wasn't sure if you were Zen or just catatonic. Or possibly stoned."

He rolled his eyes. She came all the way down the stairs, and put her hand on his arm.

"Oliver, we get it. You were brainwashed. You couldn't fight it. I didn't see it at first, but the way you looked at Diggle, in the warehouse, the way you looked at your own sister, like she was a stranger to you – it became clear to me."

He nodded, unwilling to even remember that time in the warehouse. He remembered being so caught up with Felicity that he saw Diggle as an afterthought. And his sister – he shuddered. He knew he couldn't have harmed her. He knew. But for a fraction of a second, he wasn't even sure who she was. He put the mop and bucket in a corner, and rolled out the mat.

"Come on, warm up." Laurel looked at him, surprised. "Don't you want to show off what Nyssa taught you?" She'd brought her warm-up clothes with her, and went into the shadows to change. At his questioning look, she explained.

"Not that you haven't seen it all, _Ollie_ ," she stressed, as if to remind him that it was all in the past, "but I don't want to give Felicity the wrong idea. Girl can get scary."

He nodded, secretly proud of Felicity, happy that she still wanted him. And they started. He was impressed, despite himself. Nyssa had really made some improvement to Laurel's style. No longer was she flailing away in anger, she was taking the time to consider her next move, and making sure her punches landed. He would have liked to see more leg-work, and less over-reliance on her baton – she didn't seem to get that any weapon could be taken away from you, and used against you. But with fists and feet, the weapons were right there. But it didn't matter. Laurel had found her own style, in spite of him, and that made him happy.

His relationship with Felicity was something else which developed in the month he took off to get into fighting trim. They met practically every day. Sometimes he'd drag her away from her work as head of Applied Sciences – if he didn't make her have lunch, she'd work all through the day. And sometimes it was at the foundry, where they'd have sparring sessions which, more often than not, ended in intense make-out sessions which left her flushed and bright-eyed and him with shaking hands and an erection. He wanted to say he'd never made out so much in his life since high school, while the reality was that he'd never made out so much in his life. Ever since he hit puberty, there had been enough girls who were happy to go all the way almost immediately. Which also meant he'd never jerked off so much in his life, either. Not that he minded that much. On the island, he hadn't even felt the impulse to touch himself, so much so that he seriously thought he'd broken something. So the first time Felicity bailed after a kissing session, leaving him with a rock hard erection, he felt a profound sense of relief – at least that still worked, he thought, immediately happy he hadn't voiced the thought. Just like a pathetic man, he could imagine any woman of his acquaintance saying, as long as your penis is ok, you're ok.

Verdant wasn't open yet, so he snuck upstairs to the men's room to deal with the _situation_ \- he was pretty sure that the moment he tried to jerk off in the foundry, people would start trooping down the stairs. Even if he hadn't had to get all the way across town with a hard-on, he didn't feel very comfortable jerking off in his sister's apartment, even when she wasn't in it. Maybe he should think about getting his own place. Felicity had said that he could use Ray's apartment at Palmer Technologies any time he wanted – Ray wasn't coming back to Starling any time soon. He didn't know if he was comfortable with that, but he wouldn't admit it to Felicity, who'd just roll her eyes and tell him to stop being such a caveman.

He fixed her image in his head as he started stroking himself, closing his eyes. He went on to their one night together, in Nanda Parbat, that moment when she was sitting in his lap, riding him, her breasts pressing against his chest, and then sinking into her warm wet – fuck. He shook as he came, covering his mouth to stop his moans from resounding round the deserted bathroom. He came down slowly, rubbing his stomach, thankful that no-one had been there to notice it had taken him about ten seconds to shoot. Now that he'd come, his brain wanted to take him to other places, like the real last time he'd been _with_ Felicity. No matter how often he'd tried to deal with it, it just kept coming back to him. If he hadn't been Sahim, other options would have come to mind. To just grab her and Thea, tell the others, and run. Oliver would have known that coming back from what he did to her wasn't an option. But Sahim hadn't been able to think past the league, and R'as al Ghul. The sleepless nights he'd spent on Lian Yu had been mainly occupied with that night, trying to analyse his thought processes as Sahim. And it changed _nothing_. He often thought about Carrie Cutter's psychiatrist, and whether he should take her up on her offer. Though he wondered if doctor-patient confidentiality really extended to admissions of rape.

Things came to a head with Felicity after about a month of intense work-outs and even more intense make-outs. It wasn't that they didn't talk – they talked as much as they ever had, and he was starting to feel like part of the team again. And he was also starting to feel like maybe if he did go out as the Arrow soon, he wouldn't slip off a rooftop after a bad landing or kill someone accidentally with a badly aimed arrow. But their kissing sessions were getting more and more heated, and the day arrived when Felicity strode down into the foundry, did not bother to change, and just dragged him away from the punching bag to latch onto his mouth. His skin caught fire as she licked her way into his mouth, sliding her hands under his t-shirt, rubbing his chest and back. He lifted her onto a table and stood between her legs as they kissed until they were both breathless. She pulled back from him, looking at his crotch, smirking.

"You've got a little problem there."

Oliver pretended to be offended.

"Little?"

Felicity giggled, then sobered up.

"I want to touch you . . . " she said, thoughtfully. He had to close his eyes to keep from coming immediately – that would be impressive, Oliver. "But I don't know if I can," she added. She looked at him, worried, and he just had to kiss her again, softly this time.

"Take all the time you need," he said.

"I have an idea."

"Oh?"

"Take off your shirt," she continued, and this time it was his turn to smirk. "Wipe that smile off your face, mister!" Once he had his shirt off, she stroked his chest a bit, kissing the scars and the tattoos, until his hands started to shake. She noticed that he was close, and giggled.

"Now turn around," she ordered. Ah. There was a slight problem with that.

"There's something new, on my back," he started tentatively. She looked puzzled.

"Something good?" she asked, uncertain. He shook his head, mouthing 'no', and he saw the resolve in her face get firmer. "Show me."

He turned around, hoping he'd prepared her enough. She was silent for a few seconds, and he could only feel her breath on his back. Then he felt her touch the brand gently, with just the tips of her fingers, tracing its lines, and he shivered.

"Does it hurt?"

"Not anymore," he answered. There was a pause, as she seemed to be studying the brand. Then he felt her lips on him. He should have known. She'd never been disgusted by his scars, or horrified. She sighed, and slipped her arms around his waist. She pulled him closer to her.

"Now open your pants."

"Felicity?"

She poked him in the side with her fingernails.

"That's an order, mister!"

He hurriedly complied, and pushed his pants and underwear down to his thighs, not without some trepidation. It occurred to him that this time, he was naked, while she was fully dressed, and maybe this was when she finally got her payback. His cock didn't care, though. Especially when her hand waved in front of his mouth imperiously. He licked it, sucking her fingers into his mouth, hoping he was doing the right thing, feeling gratified when he felt her intake of breath behind him. Her hand circled his cock, fingertips playing with the head at first, spreading moisture. He looked down in disbelief, noting with a kind of distant wonder that her fingernails were purple today. Then she stopped playing, gripped his cock firmly, and started jacking him. He held on to the table to keep himself from collapsing in her lap. He felt like his skin was sensitive to everything, the feel of her bare thighs on his ass, her chest rising and falling against his back, her huffing breaths between his shoulder blades. She sped up her rhythm, her hand becoming a blur, as she expertly brought him off. He groaned through gritted teeth as he came, spurting all over his stomach. He wanted to kiss her all over, he wanted to bury his face between her legs, his head was all over the place, but as he started coming down he worried that it had been too much, too soon; a worry that was confirmed when a fistful of wipes appeared at his elbow. He cleaned himself up, and pulled up his pants.

When he turned around, Felicity was still frantically scrubbing at her hand, and he took it gently.

"Hey." She looked at him, reluctantly, her eyes shiny. "I'm sorry, Felicity. I shouldn't have let you-"

"Oliver." Her voice was shaky as she interrupted him. "You don't get to _let_ me do anything. I decide when I'm ready. And maybe this was a bit too soon, but . . . live and learn, right?" Her voice cracked a little on the last phrase, but she managed to hold it together. She suddenly slid off the table. "I need to go."

Her heels clicked on the concrete as she rushed to the stairs. He told himself he had to hold it together until she left, but he was failing, just as he heard her footsteps coming back. He tried to put on a brave face, but he didn't think he'd managed it.

"Listen. Look at me." He looked in her eyes, and even though she was shaking, there was no hatred there, or fear. "This isn't the end. This wasn't goodbye. This was just the first step." He nodded, unable to speak, but doing his best to believe her. "I don't know when I'll be ready for the second, but I promise . . . I _promise_ it'll happen."

He rubbed his hand over his face roughly, and smiled at her, managing to hold it together for a little longer.

"Felicity. I love you." She nodded, managing to smile back at him through trembling lips.

"I . . . oh my God. I was just going to say 'I know', like some douchey Star Wars fanboy. I will see you tomorrow, ok?"

"Ok," he whispered. He waited until she was gone, and then waited some more. But he wasn't going to break down, he realised. She had pushed herself a bit too far, absolutely. But she'd made him a promise. And he knew that Felicity always kept her promises.

An hour later, standing in front of the display case containing his new suit, he nodded, even though no-one else was there. It was time. He was just strapping his quiver to his back when Diggle and Thea walked in, and he looked at them, opening his arms.

"Well? How do I look?"

Thea beamed, an enormous smile on her face that he'd thought he'd never see again.

"Like a hero."

Diggle clapped him on the back, and sat down in front of the monitors, saying that he couldn't stay long – Lyla was out of town and the babysitter could only stay till midnight. And so he went patrolling with his baby sister, begging his mother for forgiveness. He bit back an exclamation every time he thought that her form was off, that her arm shook when she aimed, and gently adjusted her stance. Laurel joined them after an hour, and that night they stopped two robberies and an armoured car heist. They all went back to Palmer Tech to change, just before dawn, and Oliver and Thea let themselves into the loft as the sun was rising. There was a beautiful view of the city from Thea's apartment, and he allowed himself to feel some hope as he thought of the future.

The next few months allowed him to hold on to that hope. He and Felicity still met regularly, beyond their Arrow business, and still talked as much as they ever did. This time, he let her do most of the talking – he wanted to hear about her life for once. She'd had to learn so much about his life, his problems, his angst. And so he found out about growing up in Old Vegas, away from the glitz and glamour of the Strip, what it was like to look like her and be into computers, to be a woman and be into computers. They even had their first, non-Arrow, non-league fight, just like a normal couple. He'd spent what she considered an exorbitant amount of money on the Ducati, and then started talking about buying a BMW. Though the last part had been more of a joke. The last straw for her had been his casually thrown off 'it's just money', and she'd called him a spoilt brainless trust-fund superannuated rich kid.

"You don't have to tell _everyone_ I said that, Oliver," she said tiredly, as he told Laurel about their fight over coffee.

"No, Felicity, really, I love hearing it!" Laurel was grinning happily. "I think I have a new ringtone!"

Felicity put her head in her hands, but Oliver took one and kissed it. She smiled at him.

"It's not up to me to tell you how to spend your money, Oliver."

Laurel had just left, still giggling happily.

"It's not that, Felicity. We had a fight – about money! Just like a normal couple!" He couldn't hold back the joy in his voice.

"I'm glad my frugal ways amuse you," she said drily. "I just thought that after the whole Slade Wilson affair, that you were broke. And you didn't want the job at Palmer, so I really don't know what you're living on."

"Ah," he started, wishing he had told her this earlier. He would have, if he'd known she was so worried about money. "The thing is, Felicity, when people who've grown up with money say they're broke, it's . . . kind of relative."

Felicity gave him a look that suggested she'd be hitting him right now, if he hadn't been holding her hands tightly.

"Are you telling me the money isn't all gone?" she said tightly.

"The _Queen_ money is all gone. The Dearden money, now . . . It's in the Cayman islands! And all tied down in investments," he continued hurriedly, worried about the way she was looking at the steak knife.

"You just keep holding my hands, maybe I won't kill you."

He started kissing her fingers, and turned her hand over to kiss her palms. Her eyes darkened and she blushed.

"I have to go back to work," she said finally. Then she leaned over the table and whispered in his ear.

"Come by the foundry this afternoon, you might get lucky,"

He watched her walk out, knowing full well it would be a few minutes before he trusted himself to get out of the booth.

That afternoon, he waited until he heard her coming down the stairs to start the reps on the salmon ladder, knowing how much she loved to watch him on it. He'd already had second thoughts about her words earlier. In the weeks after what he was starting to call the 'handjob disaster', it had taken them a while to get comfortable with each other again, enough to kiss like they used to. He didn't want that to happen again, so he was going to be firm, determined, and steadfast. That resolution lasted until he jumped off and turned around. The moment he caught sight of her, his mouth went dry. She was wearing the black dress with the cut-outs, and he desperately wanted to put his hands in every single one. And then she spoke. And he was lost.

"I want you to touch me."

She'd put on her reddest, shiniest lipstick, and the effect was almost hypnotic. He could no more resist than he could stop breathing, and so he kissed her hard and deep. She broke it off and took his hand, sucking on the index fingers, her meaning unmistakeable. He walked her backwards to the table and she leaned against it, spreading her legs slightly, pulling his hand underneath her dress. She gave him a look, as if to say that was all the direction she was going to provide, and he carefully slid his hand into her panties. She gasped as he brushed her clit, teasing it with little taps, sliding his finger into her folds, spreading the wetness he found there. He wanted so badly to sink his fingers deep into her, to fuck her with them, and he clenched his jaw as he did his best to hold back. He continued gently circling his fingers, and she closed her eyes, holding on to his other arm to keep on her feet. Her thighs were starting to shake, and without warning she came, crying out his name. He pulled his hand out and gently pulled her dress down. She was flushed and dazed, but smiling, and she kissed him. He deepened the kiss, sure he was going to come without even being touched, but Felicity had other ideas, he realised, as he felt her hands on his waistband, opening his pants. He tried to stop her without breaking the kiss, but she slapped his hands away. He started laughing into her mouth, and she giggled too, and they broke apart.

"Felicity, you don't need to-"

"But I want it! Give it to me!" He must have been slack-jawed at that, because she burst into giggles immediately.

"Just trying something new, Oliver." She pouted slightly, and he couldn't resist nuzzling her lower lip. "Sorry, I'm no good at the porn talk."

"You're amazing at everything," he said, as he transferred his attentions to her neck.

Before he knew it, she'd slipped her hands into his pants again.

"No distractions, Oliver." She started jacking him, and he groaned. It took all of his concentration not to come instantly, so he barely registered his phone going off.

"We're ignoring that, Oliver, don't worry," Felicity murmured. "Now come on, come for me, baby."

His vision whited out, which seemed to be the cue for both their phones to go off, this time. He looked at her, and she was smiling, one hand cradling his cheek. He tried to catch his breath, wondering what was so urgent that they were both being called.

"I guess we'd better answer it," Felicity said wistfully. Oliver nodded, not too happy about it either. Though there was one thing he needed to know.

"Baby?"

Felicity rolled her eyes.

"I'm sorry if I hurt your masculine pride, Oliver."

He shook his head, and grabbed her, kissing her till she squealed in protest at his stubble rubbing her face. He let go of her, still smiling.

"I don't know, I kinda liked it."

He would have stayed there, phones be damned, except he could hear the alley door to the foundry creaking open. Felicity zipped him up, quickly, and they looked almost normal when Diggle walked in, looking at his phone.

"Hey Oliver, didn't you get my calls-" he looked up, and his worried expression turned into a beaming smile when he saw Felicity standing there, looking slightly ruffled.

"Man, I wish I didn't have to drag you out, but it's a bad one."

Felicity opened her mouth to speak, and Oliver gave her a warning look, sure she was going to say something like, 'oh that's ok, Oliver finished,' or similar, and he really didn't want to go there with Diggle.

"That's fine, Dig," he said. "We were just leaving."

As they walked to the car, Felicity slipped her hand in his, and he squeezed it, sure that nothing could diminish the joy he felt at that moment.

Ironically, that was the beginning of what he would later call the case from hell. He hadn't had much experience with human-trafficking rings ever since he came to Starling, considering them a matter for the police, or the FBI. But this one was like the hydra – every time one head was cut off, another grew in its place. Containers full of human misery, arriving at the docks, women kept in cages, boys and girls sold to the highest bidders, children . . . children. It took them weeks to shut it down, weeks in which he sorely regretted his vow to stop killing. He even had a confrontation with Captain Lance on a rooftop, during which the only reason he was sure that Lance wasn't wearing a wire, was that he urged Oliver to put an arrow through the eye of everyone involved. He'd also dramatically ripped his shirt open, to prove it to him, which was something Oliver had never needed to see.

Oliver winced, and turned off the voice modulator – not because he was certain Lance wasn't somehow wired, but because he felt ridiculous using it with someone who knew who he was.

"You don't know what you're asking me." Lance seemed to want to interrupt, but Oliver raised his hand to stop him. "And you'll regret it once the bodies start dropping." Lance looked away, ashamed. "Go home, Captain."

He dropped off the rooftop, and half of him was still surprised that it hadn't erupted in dazzling spotlights and another SWAT team. He couldn't tell Lance that the temptation to kill them all was almost irrestistible. This was the one and only time he regretted not being Sahim anymore – Sahim would have beheaded them all, without exception. But even though he wasn't, and even though he'd refused Lance, he knew one thing: if any of the ringleaders did not get prison time, if they got witness protection instead, there was going to be a rash of car accidents wherever they were hidden. Fatal ones.

In between all of this – reconciliation with Felicity, with the rest of his friends and family, rebirth as the Arrow, and as Oliver Queen, he felt uneasy sometimes. About three months after his return to Starling city, he started to get the feeling he was being watched. There were more shadows moving in alleys, and when confronted, they melted away. He could pin nothing down, but it disturbed him. At almost the same time, he started having nightmares. Well, different nightmares. The dreams about his time as Sahim, and Felicity, had started to fade away. These were different.

At first he wanted to put the blame firmly on Thea. She'd designated one night a week to be brother-sister TV time. Which would have been fine, except she'd developed an obsession with the living dead – zombie TV shows, zombie movies, films which looked like they were about zombies but were actually about contagion, the works. So when he started having dreams in which every single person he'd killed came back to life, he blamed that. They always started the same way – he'd just killed someone. Even though he knew what was coming, he was always frozen to the spot, until the Count, or one of Bertinelli's goons, or the assassins he'd killed opened their eyes and sat up. Then he could move, and run, but never fast enough. Soon in a kind of domino effect, every person he knew was either dead or stumbling after him, undead. The dreams all ended the same way. He got to the loft, where Thea was lying as she had been the night R'as al Ghul attacked her. And when he ran to her and tried to revive her, she sat up and tore his throat out. Sometimes he woke up before this happened, which was a mercy.

Oliver thought he was hiding it pretty well. He bought eye drops to disguise the redness, and worked out twice as hard. But after a few days spent watching him suspiciously, Felicity turned up at the loft, after he'd phoned her and said he was taking the night off. She sat him down on the couch and fixed him with a glare.

"Speak."

"Would you believe I'm having nightmares?" he tried weakly.

"Yes, I would believe that, Oliver. Especially as you haven't spoken to anyone except me about what happened." Felicity sounded both annoyed and sad, probably because he was being such an idiot, he thought.

"Who was I supposed to speak to, Felicity? I can't trust a psychiatrist, or any therapist – not even the ones at ARGUS." He paused, and considered his words. "Especially not the ones at ARGUS."

She seemed to be about to speak, and then stopped, trying to choose the right words.

"Diggle would . . ."

"He'd kill me, Felicity. And maybe a few months ago I wanted to die, but I think I've found something to live for now." She smiled, a bit smugly, and preened.

"I wonder what that is . . . no, no, don't try to distract me," she said, as he nuzzled her neck and whispered filthy endearments in her ear. They'd progressed to the dirty talk part in the rekindling of their relationship, and Oliver was thoroughly enjoying himself.

"Thea would never see me the same way. And Laurel would – " cut my balls off, he added silently. Felicity nodded, as if she heard his thought.

"And anyway, that's not what the nightmares are about." He chanced a look at her, and she looked curious, now. He hesitated. "Is it ok that I think I'm dealing with it?" She looked at him with an air of exasperated affection.

"Oliver, if you're asking me for permission to heal, I'm giving it. Moron." He was struck, for the millionth time, with the thought of how lucky he was, and that he truly didn't deserve her.

"This is going to sound really stupid," he continued.

"Oliver!"

He wondered if that's what he sounded like when he barked out her name.

"It's zombies." He winced. "Zombies. I can't believe I just said that word."

"Twice, even," Felicity said, looking at him worriedly.

"I kill people, and they get up again. And attack everyone I love. And tear them apart." He said the last words in a whisper. Last night's dream had been particularly graphic. "On a good night, I wake up before Thea tears my throat out."

"Oliver, you know that dreams are just symbolic of your fears, right."

"Yes, Felicity. I know that I'm not predicting the coming zombie apocalypse," he answered, slightly exasperated. "And deep down, I think I know what my fear is. I just don't want to face up to it."

Felicity knelt up on the couch, in front of him, grabbed his face in both hands, and kissed him, long and passionately. She didn't stop until she'd thoroughly mapped his mouth with her tongue, and had gotten him to respond, until he was dizzy, and thoroughly turned on. Then she sat back.

"Tell me."

"Lately I've been feeling . . . watched. Like there's someone in the corners of alleys, and then when I turn to look, there's no-one there. When I catch a glimpse of movement, they move like . . . like . . ." He couldn't say it. Luckily, Felicity could.

"Like assassins."

Oliver nodded, unwilling to say more. He knew it was ridiculous. Nyssa was R'as al Ghul, now. They had a truce of sorts with the league. R'as al Ghul was dead. He had to be dead. Even though Oliver had never seen the body. Even though he'd thought he killed Malcolm Merlyn, only to face him again, months later.

"Is there any way of getting in touch with Nyssa, that doesn't involve actually going to Nanda Parbat?"

Felicity's words cut right through his thoughts, which were only running in circles now, and he couldn't help looking at her, amazed.

"I don't deserve you." The words seemed to burst out of him, but he didn't want to retract them. "You know that, right?"

Felicity gave him a look.

"And the award for non-sequitur goes to . . . drum-roll, please-" But she couldn't say anymore, because he started tickling her, mercilessly. She tried to keep talking through helpless giggles. "The day I told you I'm ticklish was a dark day for mankind!"

They were interrupted by the front-door opening, and Thea stumbling through, yawning.

"Guys, Oliver has a bed upstairs – you don't need to make out on the couch like teenagers." They watched her stumble up the stairs to her bedroom. Felicity got up, and he immediately missed her warmth next to him.

"I think that's my cue," she said ruefully. She kissed him on the forehead, and started walking out the door. "Don't forget tomorrow night is date night, Oliver! And then we'll get in touch with Nyssa, ok?"

Oliver nodded. They were going to try dating again. Maybe it wouldn't be as bad this time. In spite of his trepidation, he still managed to get excited about a date with Felicity. He'd booked at two restaurants, and was already asking her whether she preferred Thai to Vietnamese, as he walked through the hidden door of their lair. Looking up, he noticed that Felicity had a frozen look on her face. Looking to the left, he saw Amanda Waller sitting in one of the chairs. Everyone was there – Diggle, Laurel, Thea, and Felicity, and he clenched his fists at the thought of Waller invading their space.

"I'm sorry to intrude, Oliver." Her voice was as coolly ironic as ever – she wasn't sorry about anything.

"Actually, I'm the one who called Amanda."

All eyes turned to Laurel, some in mild surprise, others in outright shock. One of these days Oliver was going to explain exactly how Waller had kept him a virtual prisoner for months, and had turned him into a monster. Hadn't it been made clear enough, when Waller came within seconds of turning Starling City into a crater, that she wasn't to be trusted? He managed to control himself, folding his arms, and glaring in Laurel's general direction.

"Explain."

"You weren't around at the time, Oliver, but Nyssa and I, we became friends. When you were playing Heir to the Demon."

The only reason Laurel could be that flippant was that she didn't know how much her words hurt him. And she couldn't ever find out. He stared at Waller, challenging her to say something, but she stayed silent, a small ironic smile playing about her lips. How could he have given Waller so much power over him? Hadn't he learnt his lesson in Hong Kong? Diggle had told him about the video of his suicide attempt, and he was sure Waller would use it against him if she could. At least he'd never talked about Felicity in his sessions with the therapist at ARGUS. They didn't have that on him.

Laurel was still talking about Nyssa, when he tuned into the conversation again.

"When the whole business with her father was over, we kept in touch."

"How?"

All eyes turned to Felicity, whose annoyance was boiling over, it looked like. She looked stunning, even in the harsh lighting of their HQ. Her hair was down, and she was already dressed for their date, in a red dress he hadn't seen before.

"I mean, I don't think purple smoke travels that far."

Laurel shrugged.

"I kind of gave her my old phone, when I upgraded," she mumbled.

"Anyway, a few weeks ago, I stopped getting emails from her. So I went to Diggle. Who asked ARGUS." She nodded at Waller, who took over.

"We'd been carrying out our own investigation into suspicious activities in certain cities across the US." Oliver wasn't going to rise to the bait. He nodded, as if he knew what she was talking about.

"At around the same time that Ms Lance contacted us, we'd had a breakthrough. We received a message from Gotham – there was an attempted break in at Wayne Enterprises. In the biochemistry division. Where they've been working on ways to render dangerous viruses inert." The moment she said the word 'viruses', Oliver winced. Not this, again.

"The burglar killed himself before he could be questioned."

Waller used the nearest keyboard to bring up an image on the biggest monitor. Oliver snuck a look at Felicity, and had to hide a smile. Her outrage at Waller using one of her computers was all over her face. But then he actually looked at the image, and all his amusement drained away. The figure sprawled on the floor of a high-tech lab was clearly an assassin – cowl, mask, sword, the works. Oliver felt as if an enormous chasm was opening up in front of him. In spite of the dreams he'd been having, the feeling of being followed, and watched, he'd never really believed that the league was still a threat to him. But here it was, the proof. And he sensed it wasn't over yet. Waller was saving the best for last, it looked like.

"We tried to get in touch with Nyssa Raatko in various ways, but we were unsuccessful. Finally we sent our _second-best_ husband and wife team (Diggle rolled his eyes at this point) to Pakistan – their cover story was that they were climbing K2. They managed to send a camera drone to Nanda Parbat before they were burned – they barely escaped Pakistan with their lives."

A clip started playing on one of the monitors, and Oliver stared at it, clenching his fists. He knew what he was going to see. A tall man wearing robes, a sword at his side, was striding across the plain in front of the palace, and as the drone moved closer, his face filled the monitor. Waller, always one to seize the opportunity for dramatic announcements, said what everyone could plainly see.

"R'as al Ghul is still alive."


	5. the shadow of the past

Felicity shivered as she watched the looped video on the monitor in front of her. Again and again, R'as al Ghul walked across the plain in front of his palace, and each time the camera focused on his face, she felt the chills starting on the back of her neck. It was an interesting sensation, a detached part of her mused. She felt much too exposed, naked, almost. That face, which she'd never expected to see again, except in her nightmares. Waller's words. Her brain refused to make the connection between them, refused to accept the fact that he was alive. She couldn't even say his name. She remembered yelling at him, in Nanda Parbat, and cringed. How had she ever thought she'd get away with it? The last time she'd met him in person, she'd been on her knees, waiting to die, and she'd sensed his satisfaction. That was her place, after all.

Something in her rebelled at that last thought. She'd been looking down, unwilling to focus on that hated face, and she'd felt all her layers being stripped away, just like on that night. All of it, her strength, her knowledge, her power, all taken away from her by one action, and he'd thought he'd broken her. But he was wrong. He'd cornered her, and left her with only one option, only one way out – through him. She lifted her head, and stared at him. And she knew what she had to do.

The rest of the people in the room came back to life around the time she did. Thea found her voice first.

"What are you going to do about it?" she asked Waller, an accusing tone in her voice.

"ARGUS cannot get involved in any way. We cannot enter the sovereign territory of Pakistan with an armed force. Getting there through Afghanistan is also not an option."

This seemed to rouse Oliver from his shock. He glared at her.

"What about the time you kept me prisoner, in Hong Kong, to do your dirty work for you? Wasn't that outside the U.S.?"

Felicity noticed that Laurel was staring at Oliver, a look of shock on her face. She didn't know what Waller had done to Oliver. It had taken Felicity a while to get the story out of Oliver, and after she'd heard it, she almost wished she hadn't. She pushed the image of Oliver brokenly whispering 'she made me into a monster' out of her head. Not now, Felicity. Focus.

Waller gave as good as she got.

"It was the mess _you_ made, Oliver, which ensured we were faced with an oversight committee which severely curtailed our actions outside the USA. And we can't really have plausible deniability in this instance if we just had a couple of agents whose cover was blown in Pakistan."

She opened the large bag she'd brought in with her, and pulled out a sword, offering it to Oliver.

"This is the sword we took off al Sahim," she said, with a certain relish. "We thought you might need it."

Oliver just stared at it, his face starting to sweat. After a few uncomfortable seconds, Waller put it on a chair.

The more time passed, the more energy flowed into Felicity, invigorating her, until she was bursting with her plan. She wanted Waller to leave, she wanted things to start moving, but nobody was doing anything. She kept herself calm with an effort, and realised that Oliver was still staring at the sword like it was a poisonous snake, and had made no motion to pick it up. Apparently no-one was going to say anything, and so it was up to her. She got up, and stared at Waller, folding her arms.

"Goodbye, Ms. Waller."

She stressed the first word, meaningfully, and Waller took the hint, stalking out, not without a parting shot at Oliver.

"Good luck."

Oliver looked terrible. I can see that, and I'm in love with him, Felicity thought. His face had turned grey and he looked like he was holding on to his composure by his fingernails. He rubbed his head in an achingly familiar gesture.

"Ok." He pulled himself together, visibly. Whatever he wanted to say was interrupted by Diggle.

"I'm coming with you, this time." The look on Diggle's face was terrifying. "Don't try to stop me, Oliver."

Oliver smiled, a rictus which was painful to see. They shook hands, and Diggle left, saying that he needed a couple of hours to break it to Lyla, who was out of town with the baby, and then they'd meet at the airfield.

"Felicity, can you get us the company jet?" She nodded, noticing that Oliver didn't even mention Ray, and she wondered, once again, if he knew. But Laurel interrupted her thoughts.

"Isn't anyone going to say how impossible this all is? Nyssa said she killed him! How can he still be alive?"

Felicity and Thea exchanged a look. Laurel's hero-worship of Nyssa was getting a little bit tiresome. Unless it was something else. Thea raised an eyebrow and Felicity shrugged. She wasn't that close to Laurel, who hadn't noticed anything about their exchange, which was a blessing.

Oliver was shaking his head.

"It was a mistake to expect Nyssa to go through with it. I don't know what I was thinking."

Laurel bristled.

"Just because she's a woman? I didn't expect that from you, Ollie!"

"Because she's his daughter! No matter what he did to her, it's her dad!" Oliver intoned the last three words with a terrifying finality. "Could you do it?" He got in her face aggressively, as he rarely did, with Laurel, or any of the people who knew him before the island. But today Laurel was getting the full benefit of what Felicity called post-island Oliver.

"My father isn't a monster!"

"No man is a monster to his own child."

Everyone turned to look at Felicity, who was shocked to hear the words come out of her own mouth. She shrugged, and didn't say any more. Oliver took charge again.

"Thea, Laurel, Felicity – you're the second line of defence." He rubbed his face again, wincing.

"We need SCPD's help with this one – we need people at the docks, the airport, the train station to make sure they aren't sending infected assassins here to spread the contagion. That was his plan, last time . . . ."

His words petered out, and he looked at Laurel, who eventually had pity on him.

"I'll call my dad, don't worry."

Oliver nodded, and looked at Felicity. He seemed to run out of steam. His face lost even more colour, which she hadn't thought was possible.

"Felicity . . . I'll be a minute. Just. Wait."

He turned on his heel and strode out of the room, and Felicity winced. It's never a good sign when the man you love has to leave the room to throw up after he looks at you, she thought sardonically. But she knew what was wrong. He was thinking of that night. All the horror she'd just felt, Oliver was feeling too. And she had to fix it. Because if he went to Nanda Parbat like that, he'd be dead in seconds. She was going to have to push her misgivings to the side, and deal with them later.

Felicity only paused to collect what she needed, and at the same time, sent a couple messages on her mobile phone. Laurel and Thea looked at their phones and then at her, clearly puzzled. She glanced to the ceiling, and then to where Oliver had gone, and they understood. She'd put security cameras in here, and Oliver knew where the footage was going, and how to access it. She regretted, momentarily, showing Oliver how to work all the special additions she'd made to their new lair, but regrets were pointless. She knew that more than anyone.

Felicity took her time going to the executive washroom, not wanting to interrupt Oliver if he'd gone there to throw up. She loved him dearly, but she needed to get through this without puking herself. And she was pretty sure that was where Oliver was headed. He'd rebuffed every attempt of hers to give him the passkey to Ray's apartment at Palmer – so thoroughly that she was starting to suspect that he knew she owned the company. Though he'd never been that caveman-like in the past. So she wasn't as sure as she could be. Once she arrived at the door, she pushed it open slightly. What if she was wrong?

"Oliver? Are you still gross? That came out wrong. I didn't mean gross, I meant sick? Like, throwing up? Not that I think you should throw up, maybe you don't need to. Who am I to suggest . . . oh, frack. Are you even in here, Oliver, or am I having an intense conversation with some urinals?"

The sound of weak laughter stopped her.

"Which question do you want me to answer first?"

And she'd been right. He was there.

"I'm coming in, Oliver."

He was standing at the large marble washbasin, his head and face dripping as he splashed them with cold water. He stopped, and stared at himself in the mirror. That was not a good look. She'd come just in time.

"Huh," she said, looking around. "No urinals, at all." The executive washroom was an elegant affair in marble and chrome, and just right for her secret plan. Part one. Could she go through with it, though? Better find out.

"This is bigger than my apartment!"

Oliver gave her a sceptical look in the mirror.

"Fine, so I'm exaggerating. But not by a lot." She looked at him closely. His colour was not good. "I bring gifts! Vodka, water and gum."

"Gum?" He took the vodka and the water gratefully, and alternated rinsing out his mouth with one, and then the other.

"Do not knock the minty-freshness, my friend."

He rolled his eyes, but obediently popped some in his mouth. She had to hide a smile. It _was_ weird to see him chewing gum, but she was sure it would make him feel better. The vodka would have worked too, but she didn't think it would help his stomach. She looked at the marble and chrome affair that was the washbasin and vanity top, eyeballing it. Yes, definitely high enough for her plan. She had to catch herself before she rubbed her hands together and said 'Excellent' in her best Mr. Burns imitation, but Oliver was already looking at her suspiciously. He opened his mouth, and closed it again, and she just gave him a look.

"So, about R'as al Ghul," Oliver said. He wasn't stumbling over the name, like he used to. Ah, but he should have seen his own face when Waller said 'Sahim', Felicity thought. His eyes had gone dead, for a second.

"You're not-"

Crying, Felicity thought? Screaming? Oh, I'm doing all that, Oliver. But I'm boxing it all up, pushing it aside, to deal with later. There was a part of her, a tiny part which was full of anger, which enjoyed throwing his words back in his face, wanted to tell him _I don't have the luxury of falling to pieces_. But that wasn't the plan. She wanted to make him feel better, not worse, not remind him of the horrible time when all they seemed to do was snipe at each other.

"Maybe I'm panicking just a little."

She punctuated her words by patting him on the chest. He shook his head, and started to stare at his face in the mirror again. She placed herself in front of him, and waved her hands in his eye line.

"No, no, no, Oliver. No zoning out. Focus on me."

He looked at her, startled. Yeah, that's right – not going to let you turn into miserable old Sahim again, Oliver. Not going to happen.

"Give me a boost, these shoes are killing my feet."

He lifted her up on the marble vanity, and she toed them off. She wasn't actually lying – why did she wear such skyscraper heels? Oliver looked like he was going to ask her the same thing, and she rolled her eyes.

"It was date night, Oliver. _Date night_. I wasn't expecting to spend a lot of time on my feet."

She winced.

"By which I mean, I was going to be sitting down."

His mouth was twitching in an unwilling smile. Then he sobered up.

"I thought that seeing him again would . . . bring back those memories."

He sounded hesitant.

"It kind of did. But they're only memories, Oliver. They don't have power over us unless we let them." And even if I think that he put something extra, just for you, in the Stockholm formula, I'm not going to tell you about it.

"Now come here."

He came closer, and she pulled his head down to hers. She started off small, with little kisses on his lips and then pulled back, looking him in the eyes. He was starting to get interested, and the next kiss was deep and passionate. She desperately wanted to squeeze her thighs together, feeling a familiar ache building up. Instead she did the opposite, spreading her knees and pulling him between them. She slid to the edge so that his crotch was pressing against her inner thighs, and there were definite signs of interest there. And we have lift-off, she thought. She pulled his shirt out of his pants, and slid her hands under it, stroking his back. His kiss deepened, but he kept his hands chastely on her waist. Why did he have such iron self-control? Time to raise the stakes a little. She pulled back and looked at him.

"I wonder if you realise, Oliver," she said, while undoing the clasp of her halter neck dress, "that I don't need to wear a bra with this."

The straps came down, and he stared. She took the opportunity to unbutton his shirt, sliding her hands over his chest.

"Wait . . . maybe this isn't such a good idea."

She would have been more despondent if he had taken his eyes off her breasts while he said that. His hand at her waist was trembling, and his cock was seemingly taking a permanent position of burning into her inner thigh. She took his hand and put it on her breast, and he gasped. Her nipple hardened in reflex and she bit her lip at the sensation. God, I've missed this, she thought, just as he started caressing her, unable to resist. He was flushed, his eyes dark, and she looked into them, not letting him look away.

"Do you want me?" she asked fiercely.

He kissed her again, unable to take his hand off her breast, it seemed. Felicity pulled him closer and it was wonderful to feel his arms around her, losing herself in his mouth. And yet. She was moving too fast. She knew that. But they were out of time. She had to send him off feeling like he was on top of the world, or else R'as al Ghul would cut him down without a second thought.

"What if I don't come back?"

"That's not what I asked, Oliver."

She went for his belt, and he groaned, but didn't try to stop her as she unbuckled it and unzipped his pants. She pulled his underwear down, and had another moment of misgiving when she saw how hard he was. She was glad Oliver chose that moment to kiss her again, because she was on the verge of running away. No, the plan. She had to go on with the plan. Oh, the sex plan, her snide inner voice commented. The one you just came up with, the one you don't even know if you're ready for, she thought. That plan. And maybe the details were simply, 'sex Oliver up so good, that he'll be relaxed and confident when he leaves, and he'll be a bit fuck-stupid when he asks himself how come I gave up so easily on going with him.' Yeah. And maybe the plan hadn't included her reaction when she actually came face to face with the- you know. It. She found herself calming down, though, as he kissed her, and the knowing look in his eyes when he pulled back suggested that she was underestimating his intelligence, and overestimating her ability to lead him around by the dick.

So, she thought. He was going to pull back, she was sure of it. We need to bring out the big guns. She pulled his hand under her skirt, thanking any benevolent force for good that she'd gone with loose and short rather than skin-tight, and waited for his reaction when he found only bare skin, while desperately making a mental note that the corridor security footage would have to be scrubbed as soon as possible.

"Whoops," she said mildly, pulling out the condom she'd stashed in her clutch purse.

"Felicity!"

His face was – well, she found it hard to describe. There was longing, and lust, as well as worry, and a deep abiding love. For her. She spread her legs a little more, and he swallowed, clearly trying to control himself, to be the gentleman.

"This isn't very romantic," he said desperately.

"That's all you got?" She smiled, and he sighed. She flicked the condom at him, and he caught it.

"I had so much stuff at home," she pretended to lament. "Enough candles to open a store at the mall. Champagne. Sexy lingerie."

He couldn't hold back a grin, and she was shocked into silence. How long had it been since she'd seen him smile like that?

"As opposed to no lingerie?" he said, and then, miracle of miracles, he tore open the condom wrapper. Touchdown! Kind of. Was it touchdown? Or checkmate? He'd put it on while she was debating metaphors, and he was looking at her, opening his mouth to ask her for permission again. She put her fingers over his mouth, and pulled him closer, wrapping her legs around his hips, and kissing him again. She wrapped her hand around his cock, and guided him inside her, hissing slightly as he slid in, stretching her in a way she wasn't really used to anymore. It had been a while. And she was in no way as wet as she needed to be. She was balanced at the edge of the washbasin, and he was all the way in, and she had to pause for a second, disoriented. She was finding it hard to catch her breath, and stared at him, trying to get her bearings.

"What do you need, Felicity?" He was speaking in a harsh whisper.

"I need you to talk to me, " she gasped. "I need to know it's you."

He started thrusting and she whimpered. It felt strange, at first. And then, suddenly, shockingly, _so good_. He was looking at her face with such reverence, such awe that she could barely stand it. He started talking, and she couldn't understand what he was saying, so caught up with the balancing act she was doing on the countertop and the forgotten nerve-endings sparking every time he thrust in.

" . . . in your office . . . wasn't the first time I saw you . . . was in Starling, saw you in dad's old office," here he had to pause to moan as he started moving a bit faster. "You looked so good . . . you saw my picture, called me cute," he gasped, and she couldn't even remember the time he was talking about. "I couldn't go home, that . . . Waller, she kept me in Hong Kong, that-"

She clung to his shoulders and wrapped her legs tighter around his hips, and it took her a second to realise that he'd switched to Mandarin, mid-phrase. She realised he was asking her something, and he seemed worried that she wasn't answering.

He said the same phrase again, his voice rising in a question.

"Oliver," she gasped, breathless, trying to speak. "You're not speaking . . . English . . ."

He kissed her frantically, pulling her closer, thrusting faster.

"Can I touch you? Please, Felicity, please, I need to . . ."

"Yes, yes, oh, Oliver," she babbled, starting to shake.

His fingers gently, carefully found her clit, and all he did was graze it, and she was done. Her cries resounded around the bathroom as she came, conscious of her pussy fluttering around his cock, and he groaned and followed her, his hips stuttering to a halt. She collapsed onto his chest and shook. She was _not_ going to cry. No, she wasn't. She was going to be strong and tough, at least until she looked up and realised Oliver's face was wet. He scrubbed at his eyes impatiently, and she grabbed his hand.

"It's ok, Oliver. We're ok."

He kissed her deeply, and sighed, putting his forehead against hers. Then he pulled out of her, carefully, and threw the condom away. He started putting her to rights with gentle touches – pulling up her straps, fastening the clasp at her neck, smoothing down her skirt.

She smiled at him, and because he still seemed unsure, stroked his cheek.

"That was pretty amazing."

He nodded, taking her hand and kissing it.

"I have to go."

She wanted to remind him that there was no hurry, that he could stay a while. But she guessed he needed to make himself leave while he still could, so she nodded. Time for the next step.

"So, I guess it's useless for me to try to come with you guys."

Oliver shook his head before she even stopped speaking.

"No. _No_. I need you to be safe. I can't fight him, if I don't know you're safe, Felicity."

Was she giving up too quickly? Did he believe her? She took a breath as if she wanted to speak again, and he kissed her.

"If I don't come back . . ."

"Oliver. I love you."

There was shock in his eyes.

"How can you still love me? After what I've done . . ."

"I don't want to hear that anymore, Oliver. I love you. And if you don't come back . . ."

"Promise me you'll run, Felicity. Take Thea and run-"

"Oliver! Don't make me promise you anything, because I won't. I'll do what I think is right, and you have to trust me to know what that is."

He looked at her, impressed, and nodded.

"The last time you left to fight R'as al Ghul, I didn't tell you. I let you go, and I didn't even tell you I loved you. And then when you came back . . ." Her voice cracked, suddenly. "I said such horrible things to you . . ."

She had promised herself that she wasn't going to be emotional, but here she was. When she thought of the things she'd said to him, she wanted to cringe. He just shook his head.

"I deserved every single thing you said, Felicity."

She shook her head in denial, but gave up on trying to convince him of it.

"I love you, Oliver. I'm going to keep saying it until you believe me." His eyes shone as he tried to smile through trembling lips, and he nodded.

"And this is going to sound weird after all that, but – I want you to kill him, Oliver. You kill him, and come back. To me."

He couldn't hold back a snort of laughter.

"My Felicity," he said, his voice full of appreciation. "There's no-one like you."

She hoped she'd been convincing enough. She hoped what she'd planned would make a difference. She hoped. He stared at her for a few seconds, as if he wanted to burn her image into his brain, kissed her, and walked out. No goodbyes, she thought. This time he was the one walking away. And even though she'd made a resolution not to cry this time, she couldn't help it, and gave herself a minute to thoroughly lose it.

Felicity hopped down to the floor, wincing. Her thigh muscles ached, other parts of her were sore, and tender, and the love of her life had just left to face almost certain death, but she wasn't sad. She felt invigorated, somehow. It was a crazy plan, for sure. But it just might work. And it was the only plan they had.

She grabbed her shoes and ran to the door, looking out cautiously, afraid he'd caught on, and doubled back. There was no-one in the corridor, so she raced to their HQ and opened the secret locker she'd had installed. Its only contents were a big duffel bag, and she grabbed it and raced to the elevator. Halfway there, she realised she'd forgotten one last thing, and she ran back to get it, and then zoomed back, pulling the dress over her head as she ran. She'd made sure that video feeds in the elevator were diverted to her own monitor in the lair, but she'd still have to check the footage personally, she thought, as she changed into flat boots, cargo pants and a t-shirt. She did not need film of herself putting on underwear on youtube. Once she arrived in the parking garage, she looked for Thea's car, and zoomed towards it, arriving out of breath.

"What took you so long? We had to hide when Oliver came by!"

Laurel sounded annoyed.

"Sorry! I had to make sure he'd really gone," Felicity answered, and Thea spoke over her.

"Do _not_ tell me what took you so long!"

"Come to think of it, Oliver really looked relaxed as he passed by," Laurel mused, and Thea groaned.

"No, Laurel. No," she said, stretching out the last word into a moan. "You went there. Now I have pictures. In my brain."

Laurel sniggered, and Felicity couldn't help a smug feeling.

"So, why did we have to come here?" Laurel started, and Felicity held up her hand.

"I have a plan," she said, "and I need your help. Thea, I need you to drive us to the airfield. I have a couple of things I need to do on the way."

"So, you managed to persuade Oliver to let you come along?"

Laurel's tone was sceptical.

"My plan involves not telling him."

Thea laughed, and shook her head.

"Finally, someone who knows how to deal with my brother. No offence, Laurel."

"None taken," Laurel answered snippily.

Felicity rolled her eyes, but forged on.

"You said you kept in touch with Nyssa through email."

Laurel dug out her mobile, and handed it to Felicity, wordlessly. Felicity scrolled through the emails sent by Nyssa, reading one aloud.

"To Dinah Laurel Lance, daughter of Quentin, Protector of Starling City, Taer as Sawad, greetings," she read. "Many days have passed since our last encounter. I hope your health remains well . . ."

"I managed to get her down to a simple 'Laurel' in her last email," Laurel said, sounding wistful.

Felicity nodded, curious in spite of the urgency she felt.

"What does Taer as Sawad mean?" she asked.

"Black Canary," Thea answered.

Felicity smiled at Laurel, who preened slightly, before turning sad.

"Look, I'm sure that Nyssa is still alive. And I think you know how to find her."

Laurel raised her eyebrows, projecting a mask of innocence.

"Do not give me that look," Felicity went on. "I don't think the phone was the only thing you gave her, Laurel. What about the GPS locator with a year's battery life you had me put together?"

Laurel gave her a surprised look.

"How did you know that was for Nyssa?"

"I figured it out, seeing as I'm not an idiot."

"I gave her a locket of Sara's – I told her it was welded shut. It was, but only after I put the GPS transmitter inside."

Felicity looked at Laurel admiringly. It wasn't like her to be so sneaky.

"So, you track it on your phone?" Laurel nodded, and Felicity took out her own, and started cloning Laurel's. She needed Nyssa, if her plan had any chance of succeeding.

Thea looked at Felicity in the rear-view mirror.

"What do you think you can accomplish? The first time Ollie left, to fight R'as al Ghul, he died. Every time he went there, bad shit happened. The worst was when we left my brother behind and someone else came back to Starling, wearing his face."

The hurt in Thea's voice was almost palpable.

"It's not a matter of – look, it's hard to explain." Felicity tried not to feel frustrated; it was so hard to get the words out, without giving everything away. "R'as al Ghul hurt us both – we need to handle him together."

This time Thea's glance was more pointed, and Felicity groaned inwardly. She had to nip this in the bud, straightaway. Oliver would never forgive her if she got his baby sister hurt, or worse.

"No, Thea. No. You both have to stay. If R'as al Ghul manages to get past us, if he brings the fight to Starling again, there has to be a second line of defence, along with the cops and ARGUS. If Waller ever pulls her finger out her ass to do something."

Laurel's look back was surprised – maybe that last bit sounded bitter, Felicity thought. Except there was something. Something she'd missed. Something they'd _all_ missed. Why hadn't Waller done something about R'as al Ghul? All that crap about sovereign territory had never bothered her before. And Oliver had told her – during his time at ARGUS Waller had continuously asked him about R'as al Ghul, and any other bioweapons he might have.

"Felicity?"

Thea looked worried, and even Laurel was looking at her strangely. She'd completely zoned out, she realised, and she wasn't sure why.

"Doesn't this all seem strange, to you?" Laurel gave her a puzzled look.

"After months of nothing, Waller just strolls in, and all of a sudden we're all scattered. We were a team, finally, and she managed to split us up. And sends Oliver off to the back of beyond, to do something which he's already failed at, twice."

Thea wasn't sure what Felicity was getting at, she could tell.

"But she showed us that assassin who tried to break into Bruce Wayne's lab."

Felicity was trying hard to explain her reasoning, and she forced herself to focus. She was still trying to process the fact that she'd had sex with Oliver, much sooner than she'd planned to, and one of the reasons was that she needed to pull him out of the destructive loop she knew his thoughts were entering, as soon as he saw that image of R'as al Ghul. And it seemed to have worked, for now. Except she was shaken, and just at the time she needed to be steadiest. All of them were shaken, and that had been Waller's plan all along.

"All she showed us was a dead body wearing assassin gear. Except for that Shane guy, when have we ever seen assassins leave their dead behind?"

Laurel nodded, slowly.

"But where would they have got the assassin outfit from?"

Thea winced.

"They took Oliver's clothes when ARGUS arrested him."

Felicity felt her blood run cold. Of course. Waller had set a trap, and they had walked right in it. She'd counted on R'as al Ghul having damaged them so badly, that even a mention of his name, and his face on a screen would get them going, without thinking too hard about where the message was coming from.

They'd arrived at the airfield, and were frozen in disbelief at how they'd been manipulated to this point. Laurel started, tentatively.

"Shouldn't we tell Ollie and Diggle what's going on?"

"No!" Felicity shook her head. "Oliver will just say that no matter what, R'as al Ghul has to be dealt with. And he wouldn't be wrong. I don't want to divide his focus right now."

She got out her tablet, and scrolled through a couple of subroutines she'd created months ago. She could work on this on the plane. "Ok," she said. "Here's what we do. Laurel, you have to get in touch with Lyla, and your dad. Forget about the docks and airports – what we're dealing with aren't assassins."

"What if Waller's people are watching us?" Thea asked.

"That's exactly what I mean – they _will_ be watching you, and you let them. But make sure you're got people ready to take them down when it's time. Thea, you and Laurel need to stick together. This is when the SWAT team would come in handy, Laurel."

"I don't know," Laurel said. "What if we're wrong, and viruses are coming into Starling, and we just let it happen?"

Felicity thought, and groaned. She knew one person who'd be able to tell them if assassins were operating in Starling City.

"I can't believe I'm actually going to suggest this," Felicity said grimly, and Thea already looked like she knew what was coming. "Malcolm Merlyn."

Laurel's face darkened, and Felicity had to speak quickly.

"I know, Laurel. I hate him too. And I can't believe I'm suggesting this after the hard time I gave Oliver when he wanted to work with Merlyn." Felicity cringed at the memory. No, she was going to block it out.

"But we need him."

"Ok. _Ok!_ " Laurel gave in much faster than Felicity had expected.

"So, Lyla, Captain Lance, Malcolm Merlyn." Felicity took a deep breath. She wanted to do everything herself, but that wasn't possible. She allowed herself the luxury of a second's anger for not realizing all this back at Palmer, when they were still together. There. Now she could focus on the present. In which Thea was frowning.

"What? Did we miss anything?"

"It's just that, with Diggle and Ollie gone, the only other person who Lyla trusts is you, Felicity." Laurel nodded, agreeing. "If she really trusts anyone, that is."

"You're right," Felicity moaned, rubbing her forehead. She started up Skype on her tablet, praying that Diggle wasn't still with Lyla. She needed Oliver and Diggle focused on R'as al Ghul, not worrying that the whole premise for their mission might be a lie. After a few seconds, the video window opened and Lyla's smiling face came into view.

"Felicity? You just missed Diggle!"

She saw Felicity's worried face, and sobered up. Then she spotted Thea and Laurel.

"What's wrong?" she said, instantly changing to agent mode, which was kind of scary to see, Felicity thought.

"It might be nothing," Felicity said, hesitantly. She wasn't sure how to continue, but Lyla took the words from her mouth.

"It's Waller, isn't it?" Lyla said. "You think it was all just too easy."

Felicity nodded, while Laurel and Thea gasped. Lyla's face turned stony.

"After working for that woman for so long, you'd think I'd recognize when she's playing us by now. I am off my game."

She sounded angry at herself, and Felicity tried to reassure her.

"It's R'as al Ghul, Lyla. He messed with all our heads, and she showed us his picture-"

"And now we can't think straight." Lyla finished Felicity's sentence. "And now Diggle is headed off with Oliver, walking into whatever trap Waller's set."

Felicity winced.

"I'm going there too," she mumbled. Lyla's eyes widened. "I have a plan," Felicity hurried on. "It's a good plan!"

They all looked at her with varying degrees of scepticism. She shook them off and continued.

"All we need is to add some different strategy in Starling, and wherever you are, Lyla. And it's better we don't know where that is."

Lyla nodded in agreement – she, more than anyone, knew what kind of methods Waller might use to get information out of people.

"I didn't take my work phone with me, but I wouldn't put it past Waller to have tagged me some other way," Lyla continued. "My other tech is all encrypted, and I don't think she has this address. But still. If I notice an ARGUS team shadowing me-"

"Don't engage!" Felicity interrupted. "That goes for everyone," she added, looking at the women in the car with her. "We can't spring their trap early, or let on that we know. We wait for them to make their move, and then-"

"We beat the living crap out of them," Thea said, her voice vibrating with suppressed fury. "What?" she said, looking at the others. "Isn't it obvious? She's going to kill Oliver. After he deals with R'as al Ghul, she's going to tie up loose ends."

Felicity nodded. It seemed plausible enough. And there was another thing. Thea didn't know there was a chance Oliver might not be able to deal with R'as al Ghul at all.

"Whatever you do, Lyla, do _not_ let them take you back to ARGUS. I can't explain," she said hurriedly, "just that everyone needs to stay away from ARGUS once she springs her trap. If she does. If I'm right," she whispered, a sudden moment of self-doubt hitting her.

"Felicity," Lyla said, her warm voice reassuring her. "Even if you're wrong, it doesn't hurt to be paranoid with Waller."

Felicity sighed, and nodded. Lyla signed off, and Felicity got out of the car, followed by Thea, who hugged her, taking her by surprise.

"Good luck, Felicity," she said.

Laurel hugged her too, and she started walking towards the plane, pausing to say one last thing.

"Don't let them see you!"

Thea nodded, and in a matter of seconds, the car was out of sight.

She took a deep breath before getting on the plane. Here we go.

"Hi, Kim Martinez? We spoke on the phone."

The woman she saw in the cockpit was familiar to her after the hours she'd spent, months ago, going through different candidates for the job. In a way she must have been preparing subconsciously for something like this – had she ever believed that R'as al Ghul was really dead? She'd known she wanted a military-trained pilot, and a woman. At first she'd been doubtful that someone who'd flown fighter jets would be comfortable flying civilian aircraft, but she'd been pleasantly surprised, especially once she'd added the bonus information that no chintzy uniform was required to fly for Palmer Technologies. And that their company jet was a little more than that. Once more she thanked Ray Palmer for his inability to stop improving and tinkering with anything technological until he got it where he wanted it. And for inspiring her to do the same, once she managed to get out of her funk. She'd conveyed all this through the CEO, of course. Felicity still wasn't comfortable exposing herself as the owner of the company – she preferred to think of herself as an éminence grise, though that sounded like she should be sitting in the background, stroking a fluffy white cat.

She pulled herself together, telling herself sternly that mental babbling was as bad as the audible kind, and shook hands with the pilot, introducing herself as Felicity Smoak, head of Applied Sciences and aide to Ray Palmer. Kim Martinez, an African American woman in her late thirties, had a firm handshake, and a pleasant manner, immediately introducing herself as 'just Martinez, please, ma'am'. Felicity started trying to explain what she had in mind. Her sudden attack of nerves wasn't helping, though.

"I told you on the phone where they're headed, but I couldn't explain before, because they might have heard me. I mean, I'm going with them. But they can't see me. We're all friends, though! So, I have to hide somewhere on the plane. They can't see me, otherwise they'll make me go back. I said that already. Oh, I'm not explaining myself very well."

"Hey. Ma'am. It's ok. This is a good place to hide. If they ask about it, I'll tell them the lock is broken."

Martinez led her to a storage closet in the tail – good thing she was short, Felicity thought. She remembered what she'd found out about the pilot: ex-marines, good pilot, unable to find work after leaving the corps, at least, work which didn't involve stacking groceries.

"And besides," Martinez continued, "I'm always glad to help the person who pays my salary." The smirk on her face said it all.

"How do so many people know this?" Felicity groaned. "It was supposed to be a secret."

Martinez laughed.

"It's the only thing I don't miss from the corps, ma'am. The gossip."

"I don't suppose you can call me Felicity, instead of ma'am," she said tentatively.

"No, ma'am."

"Ok, ok. Look, you might as well know this – they're probably going to try to make you stay. Oliver can fly a plane, and he might try to persuade you. Or cold-cock you," she said, with a sudden horrified realization.

"Ma'am, no-one is going to get on my six in my own ride. And the person who tries is going to be in a world of hurt. No matter what he does in his spare time."

Felicity rubbed her forehead. In his spare time, huh? Did they have any secrets left? Still, it was better if she didn't have to think of cover stories for _everything_. Felicity settled down for the long trip. She must have dozed off, because she was suddenly woken by Oliver's voice in her ear. She'd bugged the cockpit and the aisle, because she didn't want any surprises. And after the story Thea had told her about her dj turning out to be a league plant, she needed to be completely sure of Martinez, no matter how much research she'd done beforehand.

"Hi, I'm Oliver Queen."

"I know who you are," Martinez answered, "and Mr Diggle, of course."

"Call me Dig," she heard Diggle say, and Felicity was impressed. People who used to be in the military really did recognize each other on sight. Though she was sure there was no love lost between the Army and the Marines.

"I don't suppose I can persuade you to stay here," Oliver started, and Martinez must have made a sign or something, because he stopped in mid-sentence.

"Let me stop you right there, sir. No one flies this baby but me. And I have strict instructions from the boss not to take any . . . crap from you, Mr. Queen."

"They sure got your number, Oliver," she heard Diggle say, and she could practically feel the glare he must have got from Oliver in return.

"Best take your seats, gentlemen."

The sound of conversation faded from the cockpit, and all she heard was Martinez going through pre-flight procedures. Oliver didn't sound happy when he talked to Diggle, but he'd accepted it. He would deal with it. She settled down to prepare some contingency plans. And then the contingency plans for those contingency plans, until she had a wall of redundancies set up, hopefully dealing with all that could go wrong. She must have dozed off again, because she was woken by the door to her hiding place opening.

"Ms. Smoak? We're here."

Martinez helped her up, and she stretched, getting the stiffness out of her limbs.

"Mr Queen and Mr Diggle just left. Not before trying to persuade me to leave if they didn't come back," she said, tiredly.

Felicity winced.

"About that. I don't suppose I could be the one to persuade you to bug out of here if everything goes sideways. I actually said 'bug out'," she murmured. "I probably used it wrong, too."

Martinez gave her a crooked smile.

"Ms. Smoak. I wonder if I could mention one of the many sayings of the Marine Corps."

Felicity raised her eyebrows. She knew about Semper Fidelis, but Martinez probably meant something else.

"Nemo resideo – which means we don't leave anyone behind."

Felicity nodded. She knew about that one too. Martinez continued.

"Mr. Queen found it necessary to tell me that I wasn't a Marine anymore."

Felicity winced.

"I hope you didn't hurt him too bad. He kind of has to fight a super-villain."

Martinez smiled.

"No, no. Just words. Although Mr Diggle did leave the plane in a hurry."

Felicity reached for the last thing she'd taken from their new lair – the jacket to the smallest Arrow suit. The one which fit Thea. Oh, and her. She'd braided back her hair before she fell asleep, and once she got to the palace, she'd put the hood up. It wouldn't fool anyone for more than a minute, but maybe a minute was all she was going to need. Or maybe that wasn't why she'd taken it with her. Perhaps someone needed to learn that he hadn't taken everything from Oliver. She checked the contents of her backpack for what must have been the hundredth time, and told herself firmly to stop stalling. When she looked up, she saw Martinez's expression, which was enigmatic.

"So, is there a Marine saying to psych yourself up before going into battle? Because I've been trying to think of a prayer, and all I've been coming up with is the one before dying. Which is kind of doing the opposite of psyching me up. I'm Jewish, by the way. Not that it's relevant-"

"Ms. Smoak."

Martinez interrupted her, which was a good thing, because otherwise she felt she'd still be babbling when the sun came up.

"Felicity." Martinez looked her in the eyes. "I can come with you-"

"No. You're the only one who can get us out of here if everything goes sideways. I don't know when's the last time Oliver's flown anything. I need you here."

Martinez nodded, like she'd expected it. Then her face hardened. She grabbed Felicity by the shoulders and fixed her eyes on her.

"When Marines move out, we say we're gonna get some!" she barked. "Get some today!"

That actually worked, Felicity thought, even if the only reason was that it reminded her of one of her favourite movies. Yeah, she thought. She was Ripley, or better still, Vasquez, and she was _gonna get some_. Though there was an inappropriately sexual element to the battle cry, her brain pointed out. Shut up, analytic brain, she thought. This wasn't the time.

It was pitch black in the gully they'd landed in, and Felicity fished in her bag for the night-vision goggles she'd hidden, putting them carefully over her head. The landscape resolved into shadowy greys, and she could actually see where she was putting her feet. She got out her phone and turned on the tracking program, picking up the small blinking dot that was Oliver, some meters ahead, who was wearing the boots with the GPS device in them. He was moving towards Ra's al Ghul's palace, and she walked in the same direction, hoping that Nyssa's tracker would soon come online. She walked fast, watching out for any obstacles in her path, and just as Oliver and Diggle must have reached the courtyard, another dot blinked to life. It was stationary, to the left of the courtyard, and when she reached the wall, she saw that there was a winding passage in the rock, leading down into a path that had been dug into the mountain. When it widened into a small courtyard, she heard a sound behind her. And in front of her. Oh, crap.

She managed to close her eyes and tear off the goggles just in time, before a torch sparked to life directly in front of her. A voice behind said something in Arabic, and she swallowed. Here we go.

"I don't speak Arabic."

She turned to face the person behind her and found three masked and cowled assassins, holding swords. There was a fourth one behind her.

"You!" The tallest assassin practically spat the word at her. "You cannot be here. You are without honour."

Felicity could not believe what she'd just heard. So, we're back to that, are we? Well, I don't have to take that shit from a fucking traitorous rapist asshole, she thought. Oh, so that's where the anger went. Welcome back.

"I'm not the one who's guilty of treason! Nyssa was your rightful leader, and you betrayed her."

His contempt was obvious from his tone.

"She is nothing, the same as you. Even though we are directed to keep her alive, you do not enjoy the same privilege."

Felicity groaned inwardly. She hadn't planned for this. She was already apologizing to Oliver in her head for being such a screw-up when the tall assassin coughed. She looked at him, disbelieving, as he collapsed in front of her, a puzzled look forever frozen on his face, and as he fell, she saw the sword which one of the other assassins had just buried in his back. As Felicity stared in shock, the shorter assassin spoke, and Felicity got a second surprise. This assassin was a woman.

"I never wanted to betray my lady," she said. She looked around her, at the others, who nodded in agreement.

"Take me to her," Felicity said.

She realised, as they walked, that they were headed to the back of the palace, to some kind of dungeon on the lower levels. They found a small barred door, and Felicity peered through. It seemed empty.

"Nyssa?"

What was going on? Was it a trick?

"I've come to get you out," Felicity continued.

Suddenly, a dark figure dropped from the ceiling of the cell, and Nyssa rose from a crouch.

"Felicity Smoak!"

The voice was full of surprise, and Felicity was trying not to feel insulted at that. The assassins let Nyssa out of the cell, and immediately dropped to their knees, holding out their swords to her.

"Rise. There is no time for this. We must retake the palace."

This was all too easy, Felicity thought. She was getting tired of assassins and their endless mind games, and wondered if this was yet another trap.

"Not that this isn't an amazing coincidence, but how come this is all happening right now – I mean, haven't you been a prisoner here for weeks? And why isn't R'as al Ghul dead?"

Nyssa chose to answer the last question first.

"Sarab," she hissed. "His first loyalty was always to my father. He used the Lazarus Pit to bring him back to life. I killed Sarab, when my father persuaded the other assassins to rise up against me. But he was only a distraction, it seems, and the rest overpowered me."

Felicity nodded – there were probably many assassins who were still loyal to their old master. Nyssa continued.

"Nevertheless, some remained loyal to me," she said, raking her eyes over the three kneeling before her. "And I was told the moment Oliver entered the palace."

"I need you to take me to him," Felicity interrupted, "to where they're fighting."

Nyssa looked surprised. And almost pitying.

"You cannot fight him, Felicity. You should wait here, and I will fight alongside Oliver," Nyssa said. "I will kill my father."

Felicity shook her head, remembering Oliver's words. She also couldn't help wondering what kind of mind-control Nyssa and Oliver might be under.

"No, Nyssa. I don't need _two_ people going all Manchurian candidate on me up there . . . " She winced, and chastised herself internally. This wasn't the time or place for pop-culture references. "I'm sorry. That's a movie in which-"

Nyssa held up her hand.

"I understand the reference." She blushed lightly. "Laurel took me to an event called a 'movie retrospective'."

Felicity nodded, careful not to show her thoughts in her expression. Movie night with Laurel, huh? Ok, then.

"And you are right," Nyssa added reluctantly. "I cannot trust myself to do what is required, when it comes to . . . him." The last word was spat out.

"But why do you think _you_ can do what is necessary?"

Felicity had a few hours to think of what to say to Nyssa. In the end, she'd decided to go with something Nyssa would understand. And if she had to become a little formal, a little Star Warsy, well, so be it.

"I have been wronged," she said, feeling slightly ridiculous. "Will you deny me the vengeance I seek?"

Nyssa's eyes widened, and she looked almost impressed. The other three assassins also liked what they heard, from what she could see of their faces, which wasn't much. Nyssa seemed to reach a conclusion, and started walking down one of the many dark corridors, taking a torch from the wall.

"Follow me."

Once Nyssa turned around, Felicity allowed herself a sigh of relief. She'd bought it. Felicity hadn't been sure it would work. Though it wasn't like she'd been lying. She did want revenge – it wasn't all about helping the man she loved, and saving her city. It was about payback.

They ran up winding passages, narrow stone staircases, passing through hidden doorways, at one point climbing a rope ladder to a trap door in the ceiling. Finally, they reached a familiar set of double doors. But Nyssa led her to a brick wall, and pushed one which seemed exactly like the others, but which caused a section of the wall to slide aside.

"Take six paces and turn to the left. The room is through the passage."

Something had occurred to Felicity.

"When you said you wanted to fight alongside Oliver, you didn't mean as husband and wife, did you? Because I'm _not_ ok with that."

Nyssa smiled.

"That marriage was annulled, Felicity. Although," and here she looked at Felicity strangely, "I confess I do not understand how you can forgive Oliver. For what he did to you."

Felicity shook her head. She wasn't going to try to explain what she'd realised, that Oliver had been violated, too. She hadn't even tried to tell Oliver that. So she put it in a way that Nyssa would understand, hoping that Nyssa would misinterpret her, thinking that she blamed Sahim for what had happened, when really, the only person she blamed was R'as al Ghul.

"That wasn't Oliver. I can't blame him for what someone else did."

Nyssa's expression changed. It was hard to see in the firelight, whether it was full of understanding, compassion, or pity. But she nodded, and their conversation was at an end. Felicity counted six paces and turned to the left, going through a narrow passage. What looked like another wall, turned out to be an illusion. And she was in the room.

It was a huge room, with shadowy alcoves on one side, and the main part was ringed with large braziers on which flames leapt up to illuminate the high stone ceiling. She almost fell over someone who was lying close to the wall, in one of the alcoves, and she looked down. To her horror, she saw Diggle. She dropped to her knees next to him, feeling his neck frantically. There was a pulse. She managed to push him so that he was lying on his side, and then crept towards the sound of clashing and ringing swords.

Oliver and R'as al Ghul were fighting, and had been for a while. Oliver had told her about the mountain, and how they had to be shirtless for that duel – when she'd raised her eyebrows sceptically he'd smiled, and mentioned the league armour which they sometimes wore. So she guessed the shirtless thing was a 'no tricks up my sleeve' signal for assassins. Except they weren't bare-chested _now_. And while that didn't matter with Oliver, it kind of did, with R'as al Ghul. What if Oliver got an opportunity to stab him, and then the armour saved R'as al Ghul's life?

She watched, from the shadows, as they circled each other in a deadly dance, clashing their swords, looking for a weak spot, and occasionally finding one. It seemed they were at a stalemate, equally matched – when Oliver had told her about the duel he'd lost, he made it sound like he'd been hopelessly outmatched. But this didn't seem like the case now. And slowly, steadily, Oliver was gaining ground. He was forcing R'as al Ghul back against the wall, each swing going through his defences, resulting in a cut, until he sliced along his side, and then swung hard against R'as al Ghul's sword. Which broke, leaving him with just the hilt and a jagged edge.

R'as al Ghul leaned against the wall, and laughed.

"Well done, boy. You've won. Now run me through, if you can."

Felicity felt a prickle of fear along her spine. That didn't sound like a man who'd lost. That sounded like a man who knew he'd won. Because Oliver couldn't do it. This was what he'd feared, why he'd been so desperate. From where she crouched, hidden, she could see Oliver's face. He was angry and frustrated, and kept trying to force himself to stab R'as al Ghul in the chest. His face was dripping with sweat, and the third time he tried, only to hit the stone wall at R'as al Ghul's side, he gave a frustrated yell which resounded round the chamber.

"What did you do to me?" Oliver sounded frustrated and in pain, and her heart broke for him. But it wasn't time, yet.

"Did you really think I was going to make you my heir? You, a foreigner, someone who despised the league and all that we stood for? All I wanted you to do was impregnate my daughter, and you weren't even capable of that!"

Oliver turned back to R'as al Ghul with a look of fury on his face.

"I never touched your daughter! I never wanted her!"

"Why did you come here then, on this fool's errand, if not to rescue your wife from me?"

Oliver looked like he couldn't believe his ears.

"You threatened my city! You sent assassins to spy on me, and to steal more biological weapons, to use against my city!"

R'as al Ghul started laughing, and Oliver stared at him. Felicity groaned inwardly. She knew what was coming. They'd been right, and Waller had manoeuvred them right into a massive trap.

"Foolish child." He didn't even need to raise his voice. "I have sent no orders, no weapons, nothing. You are merely a pawn in a much longer game between my adversary and I. And each time you are outmanoeuvred. I will remake you into Sahim once more, and unleash you on your Beloved, and on your city. You will beg for death before I grant it to you."

Wait, his adversary? Since when was Waller his adversary? Had they got it all wrong? Had her hatred for Amanda Waller blinded her to whatever else was going on? She forced herself to the present, where Oliver was trying to control his fury, knowing that R'as al Ghul was just taunting him into doing something rash.

"You keep calling me a fool, and threatening me with Sahim, but you should know this. It wasn't Oliver Queen who betrayed you, and destroyed your bioweapon, saving my city. It wasn't Oliver Queen who plotted with your daughter to kill you, and who saved my . . . my _Beloved_ from death. It was Sahim. So if I don't kill you, Sahim will."

R'as al Ghul scoffed, though there was a sudden uncertainty in his expression – he hid it well, but Felicity thought she saw it there.

"You cannot kill me, boy. Neither you, nor my traitor of a child can lay a hand on me."

Well, thought Felicity. Guess that's my cue. She stepped out of the alcove slowly, hood covering her hair, gun in a two-handed grip in front of her. This was why she'd bought it. Not to kill Oliver, or herself. But to rid the world of this monster. R'as al Ghul spotted her first.

"You!" The look of disbelief on his face would have been funny, if she hadn't been so terrified. "You cannot be in this place! You are defiled . . ."

Yeah, yeah, Felicity thought, defiled, sure. Just keep talking, asshole, while I get close enough. He was still spitting insults at her as she approached, but Felicity had stopped listening. She wished she had a funny quip to say, some one-liner, but that would be wasted on this jerk. Oliver's head had snapped around as R'as al Ghul started ranting, and he was squinting at her in the torchlight, looking like he couldn't believe his eyes.

"Felicity?" he breathed, and that was the signal she needed, as she started shooting.

She pulled the trigger over and over, and it must have looked like she was in a trance, oblivious to her surroundings, because Oliver kept trying to tell her something, but she couldn't hear it over the deafening roar of the gunshots. She watched R'as al Ghul's face disappear as she counted bullets, and when she arrived at seven, she shot twice into his chest, just to be sure. There was a ringing sound in her ears, and the smell of cordite was all around her. She wasn't sure if she'd emptied the gun, so she released the clip and checked – she still had two bullets left, and was debating whether to pump those into R'as al Ghul too, when a hand landed on her arm, and she looked up. It took her one or two seconds to recognize Oliver.

"Felicity, he's dead. You can stop now. Can you hear me?"

He sounded worried, so she tried to focus on him. She lowered the gun, noticing distantly that she was starting to shake. The hood was suffocating her, and she pushed it back with a convulsive movement. She took a couple of deep, sobbing breaths, and still felt like all the air had been sucked out of the room. R'as al Ghul was in front of her, dead, half kneeling against the wall. But was it enough? Would it ever be enough?

"How can we be sure?" she whispered. "We thought he was dead before. They have the Pit."

She saw Oliver's expression change before her eyes, from worry for her, to a kind of cold fury she'd last seen when he was talking about his time in the Bratva. He turned to the body, sprawled against the wall, and brought his sword down in a wide arc, which went through R'as al Ghul's neck and straight into the wall behind it. Oliver was breathing heavily, but his face was expressionless. He kicked the body over so it lay next to where the head had rolled, and toppled two of the tall braziers onto it, spilling oil and coals to create a huge pyre.

"Let's see them put _that_ in the Lazarus Pit," he said, his eyes dead, his voice emotionless.

A groan from behind her, caused her to spin around, lifting the gun. But she lowered it when she saw Diggle stumble out of the alcove.

"What the hell . . . ? What happened?"

"They used that knock-out drug on you," Oliver answered. "They didn't want you to interfere." He looked at her. "They weren't counting on Felicity, though."

Talking to Diggle seemed to make Oliver come back to life, and she was glad, because she didn't feel up to it right that minute. She didn't feel up to anything. Oliver asked her something but she was tired of talking. He turned to Diggle.

"Did you know about this?"

"How the hell would I know, Oliver?"

It was getting harder and harder to hold on to any coherent thought. Oliver and Diggle were arguing, and their voices were getting fainter as the rushing in her ears grew. The stench of the room, the smoke billowing from R'as al Ghul's burning corpse, everything was pressing down on her like a heavy blanket. She knew if she stayed in that room for one more minute she would faint, or be sick. Or both. So she turned away from Oliver and Diggle and walked to the door. She pushed open the heavy double doors, and stepped into the room beyond. It was full of assassins, standing in formation, silent. Nyssa stood in front of them. She nodded once at Felicity, and Felicity nodded back. Then she started walking. Nyssa must have given the assassins a hidden signal, because they moved to both sides in a flowing wave, leaving a passage for her to go through. She didn't change her pace, just walked steadily onwards, the only thought in her head to get to the plane. Get out of there. Go home.

She stared ahead, unseeing, only half aware that assassins were moving out of her way wherever she went, until she reached the huge plain in front of the palace. There, too, were assassins standing guard, staring at her as she walked past them. She walked on, not even looking at her phone, thinking that if she walked in a straight line, she'd get there one day. Whether she was thinking of the plane or Starling City, she was never sure afterwards. Once she left the plain, there were no torches, but the moon had come out while she'd been in the palace, and a silvery light revealed the path she'd taken to get here. She stumbled a few times, but kept walking, until hurried footsteps almost made her stop. Almost.

"Felicity, wait!"

It was Oliver. He caught up with her, but she couldn't stop. She had to keep moving. She didn't know why, but she had to. He tried to put his hand on her arm, but she shook it off. He walked alongside her instead, and from the corner of her eye she saw him look back at Diggle, and shake his head. If Diggle was there, too, maybe she should stop. She wasn't sure she could, though.

"Can they still see me?"

Her voice sounded hoarse to her ears.

"Who?" Oliver sounded confused.

"The assassins. Can they still see us?"

"No, Felicity. We moved out of their line of sight a few minutes ago."

"That's good," she answered faintly. Without warning, her stomach rebelled, and she bent over, retching helplessly. Oliver held her arms so that she wouldn't fall over as she heaved, and Diggle patted her back.

"It's ok. You'll be ok." He turned to Oliver. "She's in shock."

No duh, Felicity thought. I killed him. Oh, God, I killed him. The thought, the memory, made her stomach lurch again, but it was empty. She must have said it out loud, though.

"You did the right thing," Oliver said fiercely. "You saved us all. You did what I couldn't."

He handed her a small bottle of water, and she drank some, then used some to rinse out her mouth. When he put the gum in her hand, she had to laugh, and he smiled, gratefully.

"Is the plane even in this direction?" she asked, when she could talk again.

Diggle got out his phone.

"Almost," he said, adding a few bits of Army jargon which she didn't even try to understand. As soon as Diggle started walking, Oliver followed, and she held on to him, following blindly. They must have been a real sight when they got on the plane – filthy, tired, and smelling of smoke. Oliver was already telling Martinez to hurry up and get them the hell out of there, when Felicity said one word.

"No."

Oliver and Diggle turned to look at her, shocked, and she sat down, suddenly tired. But she knew they had to talk while they were still on the ground – once they took off, they would be incredibly vulnerable, and though she'd thought she knew what was going on back in Starling, she realized she could have been wrong. One false step, and they were all dead.

"After you left, Oliver, it occurred to us that maybe R'as al Ghul wasn't the one who sent people to steal viruses or whatever."

Oliver blinked, and Diggle looked surprised at first, then the answer dawned on him.

"Waller."

"Yes, that's what we thought too." But Felicity wasn't so sure anymore.

"But R'as al Ghul mentioned his adversary. That isn't Waller, I don't think."

Oliver had a look on his face, like the scales were dropping from his eyes, and he rubbed his head.

"When I was . . . here . . . before," he started, slowly, "R'as al Ghul told me a story about his rival for the title – a man called Damien Darhk."

He looked at Felicity, and sighed.

"Go on, say it. You know you're dying to."

Felicity gave him a 'who, me?' look, glad that he was able to see the humour in their situation. Because Damien Darhk? Come on! Why not Dr Evil, or Victor von Doom? He gave her a little half-smile which made her feel warm inside, and continued.

"Apparently he has his own personal Lazarus Pit, and he's as old as R'as al Ghul _was_." She detected a sense of satisfaction in his voice as he used the past tense – she didn't blame him. She felt it too.

"I've always wondered if that wasn't the reason R'as al Ghul sent me to wipe out Starling City – because Darhk was there."

Felicity nodded.

"And who better to fake assassin attacks than a man who used to be one, and was once a contender for the title of R'as al Ghul," she said. "So, what now? I mean, before I left, I made sure that Thea and company were prepared for any attack, but we were preparing for ARGUS, not whoever this guy is."

Diggle reached in his pocket, and brought out a satellite phone.

"First things first, we're calling Waller." He looked at Oliver with challenge in his eyes, but Oliver just raised his hands in surrender. "She got us into this mess, she sent us here, she'd better find a way to get us out."

It didn't take Diggle long to get through to Waller and put her on speaker, and once they'd gone through the obligatory dance of denial and disbelief, Waller came out with some more information.

"Nowadays, Damien Darhk is the leader of an organization called H.I.V.E. The acronym stands for-"

"Please don't tell us. Please." Felicity'd had enough. "It's bad enough that I feel I'm in bizarro world; I don't want to hear I'm going to be killed by an organization with a name that stresses how they're really, really evil, y'all."

"Ms. Smoak." Waller sounded unimpressed. "I wasn't aware that you were along for the ride."

Felicity shrugged.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot. This conversation is audio only. I just shrugged."

Oliver was biting his lips, and Diggle was trying hard not to smile. From the cockpit came a faint 'oorah!' Felicity knew she should be taking this more seriously and dramatically, but it had been a really long night, and she was feeling euphoric. R'as al Ghul was dead! No amount of supervillains with silly names was going to get her down. Of course, if he _shot_ them down on the way home, she was going to feel really embarrassed about being this flippant.

"As I was trying to tell you, HIVE and its leader have been trying to attack ARGUS for a while. Besides Darhk's rivalry with R'as al Ghul. So, we should be preparing for an attack, and I must cut this conversation short."

Oh no you didn't, Felicity thought, instantly glad she hadn't said that out loud. And she decided she was going to lose her temper.

"Excuse me? We're pretty sure he's going to send a fighter jet after us and shoot us down as soon as we reach US territory, and I know that the next question rushing to your lips is why should you care, right? Well, the reason is that I thought _you_ were after us, and I set up contingency plans to deal with that. If this plane goes down, ARGUS is rigged to blow."

"Ms Smoak, I can assure you that we do security sweeps every hour to make sure that nothing in our building is, as you put it, rigged to do anything."

Felicity sighed, and tried to bite back a yawn. The adrenaline which had kept her going this far was starting to drain away.

"It was a _metaphor_ , _Ms_ Waller. I hacked into your network _months_ ago. I would say I made the network my bitch, but that's pretty sexist, so I'm not going to say that. Except I just did. Um. What I meant was, one of the many things I got into was the missile launcher you took from Lian Yu. You should have left it there, or at least, not reactivated its networking capabilities. Hey Oliver, what would happen if all the missiles exploded indoors?"

Oliver, who looked like he was enjoying himself for the first time in a long while, mimed an explosion, mouthing the word 'boom!' at Felicity. His words to Waller were more guarded.

"Nothing good," he said.

"Very well," Waller said, in a long-suffering tone. "I'm sure we can spare one fighter jet to meet you and escort you home. If you can give the phone to your pilot, we can decide on a point of rendezvous, and if need be, defend you against any attack."

Oliver exhaled in relief.

"Thank you, Amanda."

Felicity rolled her eyes at him, and he smirked. She _got_ it, if she was going to be the aggressive one, he had to do the buttering up. Didn't mean she had to like it. He handed over the phone to Martinez, and Felicity stopped listening. She yawned again, irritated at herself. You do know we might all die tonight, she told herself sternly. Actually, make it _today_ , she realised. The sun had gone up while they were arguing with Waller. Maybe they should try to get in touch with Starling city, to tell them the new situation. Diggle had the same idea as she did.

"Oliver, I think we should call Lyla, and tell her that the situation's changed."

Felicity saw the smirk on Oliver's face, and was still wondering about that when his next words registered in her head.

"Don't ask me, ask _the boss_."

She stared at him, shocked. Though he didn't seem angry.

"You know? Wait, how can you know? And now, even if you didn't know, you do now."

She put her head in her hands and groaned, only to feel a gentle hand on her back, rubbing between her shoulder blades. She looked up at him through her fingers, and he still didn't look angry.

"I was curious why Palmer Technologies was paying my legal bills. And you forget I used to sign off on all the payments when I was CEO. Maybe you should look into accounting – they haven't changed one password from that time."

Felicity groaned again.

"This is my worst nightmare," she mumbled.

Oliver laughed.

"I can't believe that," he said. "And anyway, it's ok, Felicity. It really is. You're doing a great job."

"I can change the name back," she said desperately. "I can't give the company back, Ray made sure of that, but I can change the name."

He grabbed her by the shoulders and looked deep into her eyes.

"Felicity. I am ok with this, I really am. Please believe me."

His eyes seemed to be saying that she should believe him, just like she always wanted him to believe she loved him. Diggle had tuned out their conversation five minutes ago, it seemed, and was already talking to Lyla. After he explained to her their theory about who actually sent them to Nanda Parbat, and she'd promised to contact Thea and Laurel, they were cut off. And Martinez announced that they were taking off, having worked out a rendezvous point with the ARGUS pilot.

Now it was just a matter of holding on to her energy for a little longer, Felicity thought. Or she could close her eyes for a few seconds. She was getting sleepier and sleepier, and Oliver stroking her hair gently wasn't helping with keeping her awake. Still, it was wonderful to be close to him again, to feel his arms around her, once more.

She was woken by a beeping on her tablet – she'd asked Martinez to message her as soon as they reached U.S. airspace. She looked across the aisle and Diggle was staring at his phone, scrolling through pictures of Lyla and Sara, and she wished that she'd knocked Diggle out herself, but back in Starling City, before he got on the plane. A few seconds later, Martinez called them from the cockpit, and Felicity groaned internally. Why couldn't they have been wrong, for once? As they walked in, Martinez was explaining something to Oliver.

" . . . if the plane was a fighter jet, I could be sure. But even though this has some extra manoeuvrability, it doesn't have the detailed display I'd need. My best guess is that someone's targeting us."

There was also another voice in the cockpit.

 _Traffic. Traffic._ There was a pause, and then, again. _Traffic. Traffic._

Martinez caught her eye and explained.

"That's the TCAS – it's a proximity warning for civilian aircraft. I've tried to raise whoever's shadowing us, but he won't answer."

Oliver was stone-faced, though Felicity knew what that particular thousand-yard stare meant. He was worried.

"It's either ARGUS being extra sneaky, or it's HIVE, and –"

"-and we're dead," Felicity said, grimly.

Martinez nodded.

"I'll try to raise them again." She changed her tone. "This is Papa Tango zero one niner, calling unknown aircraft, please acknowledge."

She repeated the message, with no reply, and Felicity could only wonder if this was the end. She tried to look out through the cockpit windows, but no other plane was visible in the sunlit sky. Would this be the last thing she ever saw? Just as the thought came to her, Oliver pulled her away from the window, turned her around and kissed her, holding her tightly. She buried her face in his chest, and, listening to his heartbeat, closed her eyes and waited.


	6. Starling City Blues

**Note** : **Chapter 6 was much too long, so I split it up into two chapters and an epilogue. There are also a few changes here and there, but nothing major.**

* * *

As he buried his face in Felicity's hair, Oliver's mind went into overdrive, looking for solutions, but this time, he knew there weren't any. Or at least, none that were up to him. He tightened his arms around her, and a muted 'eep' into his chest made him loosen them – he was crushing her, and for a second, he was so angry that he couldn't think straight. Why was she here? He would have died easily if he'd known that she was safe somewhere else. Though that was unfair to Diggle. Why should he have to die today? Why should anyone? An unfamiliar voice interrupted his thoughts.

"This is Alpha Romeo Golf Uniform Sierra five-one-niner, do you read, Papa Tango?"

Oliver released the breath he'd been holding. He exchanged a relieved look with Diggle, and then looked down at Felicity. They must all have identical expressions on their faces, he thought. Though they weren't out of the woods yet.

"Loud and clear, Alpha Romeo, go ahead."

"The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; over."

Felicity looked at him, wide-eyed. Had he ever told her about the code-phrases he and Slade had used when trying to get off the island? He wasn't sure. And this wasn't from the Iliad, or the Odyssey; he was sure of that, at least. But Martinez was nodding, and Oliver guessed they must have agreed on one when they spoke earlier. She replied, without any hesitation.

"The deep moans round with many voices. Over."

"Roger, Papa Tango. When you reach the following co-ordinates, climb to the following altitude, and wait for further instructions." He then rattled off a list of numbers that Oliver was too tense to even attempt to memorize.

"Roger, Alpha Romeo, over."

She then turned to the three of them, still standing like statues.

"Why don't you all fasten your seatbelts? This is going to be a hell of a ride. Good thing Mr Palmer made his alterations, I don't think a normal civilian plane could take it."

A few minutes later, she started a countdown, and even before she finished, the TCAS chimed in.

 _Climb. Climb now. Climb-_

And then he felt his stomach stay behind as the plane moved from horizontal to vertical in a sickening swoop. Felicity's hold on his hand grew tighter as they were pushed back in their seats. The plane rocked suddenly, and Oliver glanced out of a window. There was a plume of smoke rising into the air behind them. The ARGUS pilot must have taken out whoever was after them. Or not. Maybe it was the ARGUS plane that got taken out. Maybe it wasn't over yet. But nothing further happened, and the rest of the journey back to Starling City was uneventful. Felicity kept dozing off on his shoulder, and Diggle was on the phone to Lyla the entire time. Oliver just couldn't help thinking that it was too easy.

Diggle was the first off the plane when they landed, eager to get back to Lyla and the baby, and so when Oliver landed on the tarmac, the first thing he heard was Diggle's disbelieving exclamation.

"What the hell is that doing there?"

The helicopter did look out of place on a civilian airfield. When Kim Martinez deplaned, she whistled.

"Who bought the Blackhawk from the Army garage sale?"

Looking at it, Oliver could see that it was pretty battered, and seemed to be an older model. Interestingly enough there were no markings on the sides, no Army insignia. So, ARGUS? A man dressed in fatigues came up to them, handing Oliver a phone. He sighed. What did she want now?

"Waller?"

"Yes, of course. Who did you think it was?"

Oliver gritted his teeth, but she continued without waiting for a reply.

"ARGUS is under attack. We have kill squads landing on the roof, and our network is being compromised. Seeing as we saved your bacon just now, I'd appreciate you returning the favour."

That was what you got, asking for Waller's help, Oliver thought. Sure we'll save you, but then you'll owe us. He'd put the phone on speaker, and looked a query at Diggle, who was rubbing his face. Then he nodded, with a resigned expression on his face. Lyla had allegiances to ARGUS which couldn't be brushed aside that easily.

"Fine, Diggle and I will be there – I assume the chopper is there for us."

"You assume right, Oliver, but it's not just you that I need. We can deal with the kill squads, but not when all our computers are down and anything networked is going crazy. We need Ms. Smoak."

"What?"

The nagging headache which had started on the plane turned into a stabbing ice-pick in his brain. No. No! Out of the question. He opened his mouth to refuse, and add a few expletives at the same time, only to catch Felicity's glare as he glanced up. He could practically feel it scorching his face, and he knew she wasn't going to yell at him while Waller was listening, but she was pissed off that he was going to decide for her without even asking. He tried to give her a pleading look – hadn't she done enough? When was he going to be reassured that she was safe? She ignored him, holding her hand out for the phone, and he gave it to her with a resigned sigh. Felicity made sure she spoke slowly, enunciating each word.

"I'll be glad to help, Ms. Waller."

Oliver couldn't believe what was happening. They should have been on the way home, looking forward to some well-earned rest. Instead they were in what looked like a Vietnam-era Blackhawk, zooming towards ARGUS. Felicity seemed to be thinking the same thing.

"I feel like the Rolling Stones should be playing right now."

He grabbed her hand and squeezed it, and she looked at him gratefully. Diggle smiled, ruefully, probably wishing he'd stayed with Lyla. They couldn't speak much on the flight to ARGUS, and so Oliver tried to communicate with his eyes how sorry he was to have dragged everyone into his mess. Felicity just rolled her eyes, and Diggle mouthed something that could have been 'enough with the pity party, Oliver', but he couldn't be sure.

The pilot circled the landing pad a few times, and Oliver noticed Diggle looking longingly at the mounted M60. A couple of rounds of that would discourage anyone lurking in the shadows, but he was sure they weren't allowed to discharge that in a city. Oliver wished he'd thought to take his bow with him, but no matter. The pilot had handed out handguns and ammo – Felicity, to his surprise, had shaken her head, shuddering. She caught his eye, murmuring, "That was R'as al Ghul. I don't think I could shoot anyone else."

Finally the pilot was satisfied the landing pad was empty, and they landed, moving quickly to the stairwell, making sure Felicity, holding her tablet to her like a shield, was between them at all times. It was a horrendous descent into the bowels of ARGUS HQ, and Oliver felt like he was going into hell. There were sirens going off, and flashing lights, and pitched battles where he and Diggle alternated hand to hand and shooting. They had been told the day's code words, and he felt stupid going into rooms and yelling the names of Greek heroes or gods, especially as he was pretty sure one day ARGUS's enemies were going to see through the ruse. But he played along, to get Felicity where she needed to be: the control room. Along the way they met the surviving members of the Suicide Squad, who had been given temporary release, seeing as Darhk probably wanted to get rid of them too.

When they rushed through the glass doors of the control room, the missile launcher had already started a countdown, and that was the first problem Felicity had to deal with. He and Diggle stationed themselves at the exits, ready for anyone who might burst through. Waller was working hard on damage control, which involved calling her contacts in various government agencies to assure them that the situation was under control, and that they didn't need to send anyone to clean up. Though Oliver hoped that they couldn't hear the alarms or gunfire. He occasionally snuck a look at Felicity, and felt himself almost bursting with pride. She was dealing with three terminals at the same time, as well as her tablet, and the way her fingers flew over the keys made her look like she was bending the hardware to her will through the power of her mind. He caught Waller's eye, and she gave him a speculative look. Had he given her more ammunition to use against him? No matter – surely now ARGUS owed _him_ , not vice versa? He couldn't keep up anymore with favours and counter-favours.

As suddenly as it had started, it was over. Waller started getting reports over the radio that the attackers were melting away into the shadows, rappelling out of windows, and disappearing off the roof. Even the fallen attackers were being spirited away somehow.

The lights came on again, alarms stopped sounding, and Felicity sagged in her seat.

"I think we're done." She suddenly tensed up. "Wait, wait, oh, crap! The rocket launcher – let's see if I can bring up all the security cameras."

One by one, the cameras came online, and Oliver noticed that everyone in the room, including himself, was holding their breath until the ordnance research room came up. When it just showed the monstrous gun sitting there, stationary, all its missiles in place, everyone let out a deep breath. Oliver passed his hand over his face, and relaxed. Felicity was still focused on the monitors, and he didn't want to distract her, but he couldn't resist squeezing her shoulder, like in the old days. She gave him a quick smile, lost as she was in the networks she was handling. He exchanged a nod with Diggle, and murmured that he was going out to phone Thea. He wasn't sure how secure any phone line was inside of the ARGUS building, especially as Felicity had fixed whatever had been wrong with the network.

As Oliver walked out of ARGUS, he realized that nothing on the outside of the building showed the battle they'd been through. It was a quiet afternoon, somewhat cloudy, and the area was pretty deserted. So, he told himself later, he should have noticed the van shadowing him as he walked far enough from the building to make sure that he was out of ARGUS's range. But he didn't, until it was too late. As the tranquilliser dart hit him, his last conscious thoughts were that he should never have trusted Waller. What had he been thinking? Though, she could have taken him at any time in the last few hours. So who the fuck was this? Then he no longer thought anything at all.

Waking up zip-cuffed to a chair was starting to get old. Oliver knew he could get out of the cuffs easily enough, but he needed to know where he was, first. It was pretty dark around him, but not too dark that he knew he wasn't at ARGUS. Though he guessed Waller had any number of run-down warehouses at her disposal. Still, this didn't really feel like an ARGUS job. For one thing, he wasn't strapped to a board, hooded and drowning. Waller sure did love her water-boarding. For another, he could sense some people beyond the light cast by a single light-bulb suspended from the ceiling, and somehow he knew that none of them was Amanda Waller. And it occurred to him that of all the security cameras Felicity was bringing online, the least of her worries was the external one, which would have picked up what had happened to him. He just hoped they wouldn't think he'd just walked out on them.

Now, who were these people? Oh, he was just fooling himself. He knew who at least one of them was. A familiar smell had been making his eyes water ever since he woke up – how many times had he told Anatoly that cheap-ass cologne was going to be the death of him?

"Anatoly?"

What the fuck, he added silently. Sure, he'd messed up during his Slade Wilson meltdown and got Leonov killed, but it wasn't like he'd actually shot the man himself.

"Oliver!" Anatoly came into the light, a big grin on his face. "See," he said to his companion, who was standing in the shadows, "I told you he was good."

Anatoly looked the same as ever, except he was here, in Starling City. Oliver thought maybe he should have played dumb for a little longer.

"Should I be impressed, Knyazev?"

The second voice was a woman's, and horribly familiar. No, it couldn't be, Oliver thought. She was in prison, there was no way it was her. He was still knocked out, and this was a horrible nightmare, because he'd put her in prison. Her next words were in Mandarin.

"That scent of yours would wake the dead, let alone some spoilt rich boy who probably sucked your dick a couple of times, so you think he's hot shit."

Chien Na Wei stepped out of the shadows and Oliver clenched his jaw, instead of swearing, as he wanted to. He was just on the verge of spitting out a denial of having sucked anyone's dick, let alone Anatoly's, when he bit back the words with an effort. This was a test, and he'd nearly failed, but it had been a long night. And day. She didn't know he was the Arrow – maybe she suspected, but she wasn't sure. And if he showed her he understood, or worse, answered in Mandarin, she'd have her proof. He had to play stupid for a while, or at least, Bratva stupid.

"Who the hell is this, Anatoly?" He pretended to struggle with the cuffs. "And what the hell is going on?"

Anatoly had turned to Chien Na Wei, shaking his head.

"You know I don't speak Chinese, and neither does my friend here," he said, in a patronising tone.

"Oh, I don't know," she answered, smirking.

"He looked pretty angry just now, when I said his job in the Bratva was blowing you in between marks."

 _Now_ he could be mad, Oliver thought.

"Listen lady, I don't know who the hell you think you are, but Anatoly is my friend and leader in the Bratva."

He glared at Anatoly who had the grace to look slightly ashamed, and continued, hoping that he'd disguised his voice enough to convince her. It was becoming really hard to switch back into what he thought of as "Ollie register".

"At least I thought he was," he said, pretending to pull at his bonds. He'd been free of the zip-cuffs for a few seconds, but it wasn't time to show his hand, yet. "What's going on, Anatoly?"

Anatoly sighed, looking at Oliver.

"Aleksi Leonov?"

"I didn't kill him!"

Anatoly raised his eyebrows, and Oliver clenched his fists behind his back.

"I know it was my fault. I sent him after Slade Wilson, and it got him killed. But Wilson was dealt with."

"But not by us, Oliver!"

So that was the problem – the Bratva hadn't got their pound of flesh. There had always been a limit to what he did for them, though Anatoly didn't necessarily know this. He'd not been sad when his connections to the Bratva had been severed by Slade. Now that his membership was no longer a matter of survival, as it had been in Russia, he didn't have to do them any favours. He glared at Anatoly.

"Oh, I'm sorry that I didn't deliver the man who murdered my mother, _in front of me_ , to you."

Anatoly looked shocked. He must really be slipping, if he hadn't known that.

"I understand, Oliver. Your family, your justice."

Oliver doubted he would be so understanding if he ever found out that Slade wasn't dead.

Chien Na Wei had been watching their conversation with interest and a sardonic smile. He wasn't sure she really bought it, but he had to accept it for now.

"We have a problem, Oliver, and we are asking for your assistance."

"Who's we?" Oliver asked, determined to act stupid with Chien Na Wei as long as possible. She smirked, and answered him.

"I am Chien Na Wei, and I represent the Triads. Which I would have thought was obvious."

He thought for a quarter second, wondering if he should insult her, and imply he thought she was Yakuza, or act stupid for a little longer. Always better to be underestimated, he thought.

"That's pretty racist," he said, in such a blatant imitation of his frat-boy persona, that Anatoly raised an eyebrow.

Chien Na Wei seemed to have become tired of his play-acting, and got in his face, literally, practically launching herself into his lap, straddling his hips and settling there. She made herself comfortable, expecting some reaction from him. Good luck with that, lady, he thought. He hadn't slept in three days, had been through a swordfight and a pitched battle – his cock was saying no thank you, and wake me up when Felicity gets here, at this point. Though if Chien Na Wei kept wiggling like that – ok, enough. He swung his arms to the front and tried to punch her full in the face, but she'd been expecting it, and he only caught her a glancing blow on her jaw. She flipped backwards, and he followed her, flipping the chair around, ready to smash it over her head. Except Anatoly grabbed him about the waist, pulling him back, and Oliver threw the chair to the side in pretend disgust. He was actually glad that Anatoly had stopped him – Helena had found out his identity through his fighting style, and that was one thing he couldn't change on the fly.

"What the fuck, Anatoly?" He continued in Russian. "The fucking Chinese? What's wrong with you? Do the brothers know about this?"

Anatoly answered in English, clearly committed to this alliance with the Triads, though he wouldn't put it past her to know some Russian.

"We have a mutual problem, Oliver. One we think you might be able to help us with."

Huh. Oliver hadn't been expecting that. He wondered how much she was going along with it to solve their mutual problem, or if she really had recognized him, and this was just her way of getting rid of the Arrow. She didn't seem to want to speak, so Anatoly continued.

"In the last month or so, there have been an increasing number of conflicts between our two organizations. Territorial disputes have become . . . heated."

"Of course, the Russians," she spat out the word, clearly not a fan, "assumed that we were responsible for all the encroachments on their territory. My masters were not so easily fooled. It was clear from the beginning that someone was pitting us against each other, to claim the city once we had wiped each other out."

"You are a son of Starling City," Anatoly continued fervently. "You have the knowledge of the city my people lack. And you would be neutral."

"I don't know," Chien Na Wei commented snidely, "that tattoo doesn't look very neutral to me."

Oliver's eyes narrowed. She _was_ trying to bait him. She wanted the Arrow to come out and play. He had to keep his cool.

"Why should I help you, any of you?"

Chien Na Wei glared at him.

"You have a sister and a girlfriend – perhaps you'd like to keep it that way? Someone smuggles a gun into the courtroom, and goodbye Ms Lance."

In the seconds before he grabbed her by the throat and lifted her up, he had time to ask himself what the hell she was talking about. Then he realised that Anatoly must have told her about Laurel. Well, Laurel could take care of herself, nowadays. He allowed himself a second of relief that he'd never told Anatoly about Felicity, before he slammed Chien Na Wei against the wall. A pinprick against his ribs made him want to look down, but he controlled himself.

"That knife doesn't scare me. You _don't_ threaten my family to get me to help you."

Once again, Anatoly got between them, talking in a soothing voice, and he let go of her. She didn't massage her throat, which would be a dark shade of purple in a few hours. He didn't look down, knowing he'd see a dot of blood where she'd broken skin. He folded his arms and glared at her.

"Try. Again."

"Perhaps there is something we can do for you, Oliver. As a show of good faith."

What was _with_ Anatoly today? Did he have bigger bosses on his back to fix this? Good faith, he thought sardonically. I'd trust the two of you as far as I could throw you.

"I'm not going to ask that bitch for anything," he said to Anatoly, praying to whatever trickster god was in charge of his life that Felicity never found out he'd called a woman that, no matter how evil. No, he wasn't going to ask fucking Chien Na Wei for a favour – the fact that Anatoly even suggested it showed that the man was seriously off his game. The Triads were notorious for deciding that whatever favour they'd gotten wasn't enough for what they'd given. He stepped back, conscious that Anatoly was almost behind him, and made sure he could see both of them.

"There might be one thing," he said, hoping he'd held out long enough, that they'd buy it.

Anatoly visibly brightened.

"No more sex trafficking in my city, Anatoly. No more women kidnapped into the sex trade, no more kids sold for sex, no more."

"Oliver!"

Anatoly was going the injured innocent route. Chien Na Wei just rolled her eyes – she knew what he was talking about.

"We had nothing to do with that, Oliver. I don't know what your vigilante friend must have told you, but I can assure you-"

"Enough!"

Chien Na Wei seemed to be as tired of the bullshit as Oliver was getting.

"I can't believe I have to work with a man who runs kids for fucking," she continued in Mandarin, and then switched to English, without breaking her stride. "Just give him what he wants, Knyazev."

To Oliver's horror, Anatoly nodded, losing the innocent look. God, he'd been such a fool. Had he ever believed that it wasn't the Bratva ultimately behind the sex-ring they'd crippled? No, he'd wanted to believe it. Well, if they'd taught him anything, it was how to hide his feelings, and he just nodded back, pretending he'd known all along. Chien Na Wei smirked at him, and he felt like wiping the grin off her face. With his fist. Or even just pointing out that the Triads probably had their own human trafficking going on, so she could get off her high horse. Great. Another thing to deal with, after they'd handled whoever was pitting the Triads and the Bratva against each other. Though this time, he was going to hand everything off to whoever in the SCPD handled sex crimes. Or possibly the FBI. He sighed, and started walking out, aiming his last words behind his back.

"Give me a couple of days, and I'll look into it."

"Why should we give you anything?" Chien Na Wei asked aggressively.

He turned back and glared at them, feeling his head throb with exhaustion.

"Because I haven't slept in three days! Because I've gone from a swordfight to a pitched battle, to being tied up in a fucking warehouse by," he waved his hands at them, "you two, and I need to get my head right!"

Anatoly held his hands up in a gesture of surrender, and Chien Na Wei just turned on her heel with an audible snort, and stalked off. Oliver continued in a more normal tone.

"I'll do it, Anatoly. Just hold your people back a while longer, ok."

"No problem, Oliver. I am very grateful for your help."

He too walked away, and Oliver was glad he didn't have a gun on him, or even his bow and arrows. The temptation to shoot him in the back would have been irresistible. How long had he been fooled by Anatoly's genial mask? If he had to be honest, the moment he'd landed in Russia and had been taken under Anatoly's wing, he should have known. And what was this new 'grateful' bullshit? If anything, Oliver should be kissing Anatoly's ass after the Slade Wilson disaster. It just never fucking stopped.

He checked his pockets, and was relieved to find his phone and his headset. He hoped Diggle was still at ARGUS, and that they had a car to spare, because he needed to get home. If he hadn't survived worse, he would have been swaying on his feet right now. As it was, he was just desperate to get some sleep. Or he could always call Felicity. Couldn't he? They hadn't really had time to talk about everything, what with rushing from one crisis to another. And by everything, he mainly meant the sex. Sure, there was the fact that she had gunned down R'as al Ghul while he was standing by, feeling useless, and he understood on an intellectual level that he should feel somehow emasculated by that. But now, examining his feelings, he really, really didn't. He just felt an immense feeling of relief, like a huge weight had been lifted off his chest. It was like he could breathe again, could actually see a future for them. And he knew that if he tried the 'because of the life that I lead . . .' line with Felicity again, the next time he woke up tied to a chair, it would be because she put him there. He froze in place as he remembered the feeling of her skin under his fingers, his mouth, her legs wrapped around his thighs, her breasts pressed against him. He wanted to feel that again, as soon as possible. More than that, he wanted to wake up next to her in the morning, and go to bed with her at night. He wanted lazy Sunday mornings in bed, he wanted to go grocery shopping with her, he wanted them to cook together, he wanted a life. And he'd have that, he thought, his mood darkening, even if it meant he'd have to kill every single lowlife in Starling City to do it. Fine, fine, he told his conscience. Not kill. Incapacitate.

Lost in thought, he was out of the building before he realised he hadn't been in a warehouse, but the basement of an abandoned office building. He was downtown, and it was early evening. Office workers were starting to go home, while all around him, families were on outings to fast-food places and movie theatres. He walked for a bit, and looked at his phone, realising there'd been about five missed calls while he'd been in the basement with his new and old mob friends, which he hadn't heard because he'd put it on silent before their ARGUS infiltration.

Walking along, trying to get better reception, Oliver realised there were other things his senses had been trying to tell him for a few minutes now. Not everyone he could see looked like a distracted office worker, or a parent trying to wrangle several small children into a car. He looked straight ahead, and there – that guy was wearing a heavy jacket, even though it wasn't cold. Once he saw Oliver looking, he put his hand inside it. To his left, a tall man in a long coat, and if he looked closely, wasn't that the barrel of a machine gun in its folds? Across the street, there were another two men who seemed to have come straight out of central casting for thugs. He looked behind him, and a hulking man was helping a harried mother pick toys out of the gutter, while her baby gurgled happily in its stroller. As Oliver watched, the behemoth grinned at him, flicking his jacket aside to show an enormous handgun strapped to his hip. Ok, fine. He got the message. Come quietly or watch all these people die.

They moved towards him, and his mind raced – he grabbed the headset in his pocket, and pressed it, hoping he was calling Diggle. He also hoped Diggle knew Morse code, because SOS was the only thing that was coming to mind. As he tapped on the earpiece, the largest of the thugs reached him.

"Mr Darhk would like to speak with you."

Now that was the strongest Russian accent he'd heard in a long time. Then the words sunk in – Mr. Darhk, huh. He'd already suspected that it must be Damien Darhk behind the Triad and Bratva showdown, he'd already tried to kill them all on the plane, and now it was Oliver's turn. He was led to a black SUV with tinted windows, and when the back door opened, he got in, only to be shoved down on the back seat, and zip-cuffed. Again. At least this time he wasn't being roofied, he thought sourly, as his mouth was duct-taped. The question was, did Darhk know his identity? When should he make his move? Even though he was tied and gagged, and looked helpless, the two thugs from the street were still holding guns on him, so the time clearly was not now. His phone and earpiece were taken out of his pocket and thrown out of the window of the car as it sped along. He still had the GPS transmitter in his boot, though. Felicity had mentioned something about encrypting its signal, so that only people who had the right code could even see it. But had she done that, or was it something she was considering? He couldn't remember, and the longer he went without fighting back, the harder it was going to be when he actually wanted to do something. As he was considering it, the car he was in screeched to a halt, and he was hustled out of it, into the ubiquitous warehouse, with, what a surprise, a chair in the middle, under a naked light-bulb.

He was deposited in it, and his sweater was dragged over his head, coincidentally getting trapped by his bound hands. He allowed himself a feeling of relief – he could work on getting free of the cuffs without worrying that anyone would see what he was doing. Thug one ripped off the duct tape covering his mouth, while Thug two produced a sharp knife and cut through his t-shirt. That was not a good sign.

"Well, Mr Queen, what a pleasure it is to finally meet you! Or should I call you R'as al Ghul?"

The speaker was a tall thin man in a sombre business suit, with a smile as wide as a lizard's. Oliver ignored what he'd just said.

"You're not Damien Darhk. And what the hell is a R'as whatever you just said?"

Lizard man sighed and nodded at thug one, who brought out something that looked like a repurposed cattle prod. Oh, this was going to be bad. These people knew what they were doing. The stick was attached to a large electrical meter, and as he watched, thug two increased what looked like the voltage. Thug one walked up to him, pressing the wand against his chest, and the world went white. He jittered and shook. It stopped, finally, and he sagged sideways in the chair, fighting the urge to puke. He must have screamed, because his throat hurt. Scratch that, everything hurt, including a specific patch on his chest, which was probably burned.

"So, Mr Queen, are you ready to talk?"

"You need to ask me something, first!"

Oliver hoped he sounded convincingly pissed off. He felt convincing. This was so much worse than anything Slade had done to him.

"Oh, I'm sorry," lizard guy lisped, "I must have forgotten. How about this? How come a spoiled society boy like you has the tattoo of a Bratva Captain? And why would you rush off to Nanda Parbat to fight R'as al Ghul?"

Oliver realised the frat boy routine wasn't going to work this time. But what would?

"Years ago, I did some work for Amanda Waller – do you know who that is?"

The man nodded, and Oliver continued.

"Then I said no, and tried to escape from her a couple of times – and she had me thrown in a Russian prison. There was a guy there . . . he took care of me."

He tried to sound ashamed, admitting to being someone's prison bitch – could he still blush on demand? He was going to try his best. He'd certainly convinced someone – one of the thugs, the one with a strong Russian accent, sneered down at him, and muttered something. He was sure he caught _pidor_ , so he had to be doing something right. It was Chien Na Wei who'd given him the idea – he must thank her someday. Fruit basket, arrow in the head, he'd think of something. The man in charge didn't seem completely convinced yet.

"So the tattoo was what, payment for services rendered, hmm? Seems a bit excessive for a piece of ass."

God, he was so close with the zip ties. He could feel one hand starting to slip through, but he was already sore and abraded from getting out of them before, and this time it was taking him longer.

"Look, when we got out, I did a few jobs for him. The usual: extortion, collections, running girls . . . I killed some people too," he whispered. He didn't want to sound too blasé about it, but he wanted it to seem like he'd earned the tattoo. Unlike what really happened, that Anatoly had just given it to him, as thanks for saving him from Ivo and Slade Wilson.

"But that's all in the past, man!" Was he coming on too strong? It was so hard to find a balance. "This R'as al Ghul guy, he believed the cops when they arrested me for being the Arrow! I'm not a vigilante! He wanted me to wipe out the city, but Waller managed to stop it. That's all I know!"

The man looked pensive, studying Oliver's face.

"So, when you went back to Nanda Parbat-"

Oliver interrupted him.

"I didn't go back – Waller sent me, with one of her agents, to make sure the job got done. The guy never saw us coming. Look, don't send me back there! She'll fucking kill me, now!"

Lizard face completely ignored Oliver's last words – but he'd heard them, and that was all that mattered. As long as they thought he was dead, they wouldn't come after him again.

"I see. It seems that you are no longer a threat to my master. It is truly a pity that we will have to kill you anyway."

He'd bought it! And Oliver'd been right, this wasn't Damien Darhk. And . . . they were going to kill him. You know, Diggle, this would be great time for the cavalry to arrive, guns blazing. Any minute now. His hand slipped out of the cuff just as the huge Russian shoved the cattle prod at his chest again, and held it there. Centuries passed as he shuddered, teeth clenched, nailed to the spot, until finally it was over. He wanted to get up swinging, but all his muscles were in spasm, and he knew he couldn't land any punches like that. He glared at the Russian, tired of the charade. He spoke to the man in his own language, hoping he still had the accent straight. The man's reaction was extremely gratifying, as Oliver bit out 'I'm going to kill your entire family.' The big man blanched, and backed away.

The other guy, the one in charge, had used the distraction to make a quick phone call, and Oliver caught enough of the dialogue on his end to know that he'd believed the whole story, and had just got the greenlight to get rid of him. The next few seconds were a blur: the man in charge reached for his gun, Oliver launched himself at him, and the wall opposite him collapsed as a van drove through it, hitting the second thug as it skidded to a halt. Oliver wished he could stop punching the man in charge, but every time he thought of stopping, he remembered how much the electrocution had fucking hurt. His muscles were still twitching from that last shock. A gunshot stopped him – that, and the blood spatter on his face. He was about to start yelling at Diggle, when he looked up and saw the large Russian holding a gun. The thug backed away, moving really fast for such a large man, vanishing into the darkness at the other end of the warehouse. What the hell was that? Did he think he was doing Oliver a favour, or was everyone in Darhk's organization allowed to kill everyone else to make sure that no-one knew anything about the boss's plans? He got up, slowly, feeling like his legs were made of jelly. Diggle was walking towards him, sweeping the room with his gun, but he wasn't alone.

"Felicity?"

What the hell was she doing here? He glared at Diggle.

"Don't look at me like that, Oliver. You know I can't tell her what to do."

Oliver grabbed her by the shoulders, and he wanted so badly to be angry with her for putting herself in danger like that. But he couldn't help noticing how amazing she looked, how badly he wanted to kiss her right now. She just looked worried, though.

"Oliver, your hands are shaking."

He looked at them and she was right – there was a faint tremor, almost imperceptible to the eye. He was also finding it difficult to draw a deep breath. And, instead of getting stronger, his legs were trying to fold up under him. Diggle had swept the room, and finally turned to Oliver.

"You ok, man?"

Oliver wanted badly to say yes, but he just couldn't catch his breath. Felicity must have seen it in his eyes, and she tried to hold him, but he collapsed like a felled tree, dragging her down with him. The sounds in the room started to grow muted, like he was hearing them through a layer of cotton wool. He could see the ceiling of the warehouse from where he lay, and then Felicity was there, blocking his vision.

"Oliver! Oliver, can you hear me?"

He wanted so badly to say yes, but he couldn't move, or speak.

"I can't feel a pulse! Oh my God, Diggle-"

"Start CPR, Felicity! I'll get the defibrillator from the car!"

It was weird. He could hear everything they were saying, though it was muffled. But he couldn't feel anything. His vision was starting to go black, too. Was he dying? Was this it? No, it couldn't be. He had to warn them about Darhk – there was something more going on than just setting the mob organizations against each other, it had to be. A robotic voice intruded on his whirling thoughts.

 _Analysing rhythm. Everyone stand clear._

They were going to shock him? Hadn't he been shocked enough today? But he remembered Diggle saying he'd bought an automatic defibrillator for the car, and he guessed the machine could be trusted to- To do what? It was getting harder to think.

 _Shock advised. Everyone stand clear. Press the flashing orange button. Shock advised. Everyone stand clear-_

Oliver felt himself spasm, but compared to what Darhk's men had done, this was nothing. He blinked. He took a breath. Then another.

 _If pulse not found, start CPR. Check for pulse. If pulse not found, start CPR._

"Oliver? Can you hear me?"

Diggle and Felicity's worried faces swam into focus above him, and he tried to smile at them. Felicity burst into tears, and Diggle just checked his pulse with unnecessary focus, Oliver thought.

"Hey," he croaked out, wanting desperately for Felicity to stop crying. "I'm ok, really, Felicity."

"Your lips were blue, Oliver! Don't tell me you're ok!"

Diggle switched off the defibrillator, and ripped the pads off his chest, putting into that action the anger Felicity was expressing with words.

"What's going on, Oliver? We saw them pick you up on ARGUS security cams, and then, nothing, for hours, until you called me."

Oliver winced, rubbing his head. He got up slowly, feeling like an old man.

"Those weren't actually these guys." That could have been said better, he thought. "I'll explain everything once we get to Palmer, don't worry-"

"No! No."

Felicity was glaring at him, her arms fisted at her side. Her hair had half escaped from her braid, and was haloed around her head – that, and the rage on her face, turned her into a vengeful goddess from an old story. All she needed was a sword and a shield. She was beautiful when she was angry – and if he valued his life, he would never say that to her out loud. She punctuated her words with pokes at his chest.

"The only place you're going is the ER."

He tried to protest, but didn't even get a word out.

"You didn't have a pulse, Oliver. We had to shock you."

Her tone indicated that she hadn't enjoyed the experience. It was no picnic for him, either, he wanted to add, but one look at Diggle, who was signalling with his eyes and shaking his head, told him that keeping his mouth shut was the only way of surviving Felicity in rage mode.

"You're going to spend the night in hospital under observation. Or else."

He gave Diggle a pleading look, only to see the man back off, hands in the air.

A few hours later, they were still sitting in the ER, waiting to be seen. Oliver kept falling asleep and the third time he nearly fell off the waiting room chair, Felicity huffed impatiently and pulled his head down into her lap. It seemed like seconds later when she woke him up, but he couldn't have been sleeping that deeply. He half dozed through the examination and treatment for the burns. He hadn't even caught the story they'd given on his behalf. Before he knew it, he was lying in a private room, attached to a heart monitor and blood pressure cuff. Felicity kissed him on the forehead, and Diggle patted his shoulder. He'd told them everything, and Felicity promised she'd look into other ways Darhk might be trying to screw the city, as well as collecting evidence that he was behind the conflict between the Triads and the Bratva. Diggle hadn't been too happy about that, muttering that he hadn't got into this crusade with Oliver to help the mob, but admitted that innocent people were always caught in the middle in these gang wars.

Diggle insisted on spending the night there – he wasn't going to let Oliver be taken a third time, he said. Oliver dozed off, lulled to sleep by the beeping machines around him. One time he woke up to find Thea sitting at his bedside.

"Hey! How are you feeling?"

"I'm fine! Why does everyone keep acting like-"

"Like you died, Ollie? I don't know, maybe because you did?"

"Almost." He stressed the word for her. The doctor had explained to Felicity and Diggle (Oliver had been in the room at the time, but already half asleep) that the only way the defibrillator had worked was if Oliver still had a heartbeat, no matter how erratic. They knew this already, but had forgotten in their panic at not finding a pulse.

"That's bad enough," she insisted, on the verge of tears. She gripped his hand and he squeezed it.

The doctor he'd seen the previous evening came in, and Oliver brightened. Maybe he could leave soon. After another examination, the doctor agreed that Oliver could be released, though not before giving him a dressing down for trying to be his own electrician without any training. Oliver sighed inwardly, but bit back his protests. He could hardly tell them he'd been tortured by the minions of a supervillain, could he?

Back at their HQ, which both Felicity and Thea had started to call the Arrow cave in spite of his protests that it wasn't even underground anymore ('it's symbolic, Ollie, _duh_ '), they'd told Laurel to meet them and ordered an insane amount of takeout, though Felicity had raised her eyebrows when he muttered that he was off Chinese right now. She sighed and phoned the Japanese place instead, though not before sarcastically asking him if they had any problems with the Yakuza that needed addressing, pretending not to hear his dark 'not yet'. When Diggle, Lyla and Laurel arrived, they were pretty surprised to find a huge table overflowing with food, and everyone there.

"If I'd known it was a family meeting I'd have told my dad – kidding!" Laurel rushed to add, after the entire room glared at her.

"What's going on, anyway?" she mumbled, mouth full of gyoza.

Oliver started the story from the beginning, hoping this was the last time he'd have to tell it. When he got to the part when Chen Na Wei essentially gave him a lapdance, Laurel snorted her soda up her nose. Though no-one laughed when he got to the later part, and he tried to gloss over the way Darhk's thugs had tortured him.

"Come on, Oliver. I saw that cattle-prod they were using on you in the warehouse. What the hell did they do that for?"

"I think Damien Darhk knew that R'as al Ghul wanted to get rid of him, by wiping out Starling City."

Diggle stared at him.

"But that would mean that Darhk's been here all along, Oliver!"

"It looks like it. And everything R'as al Ghul did this past year drew more attention to me, hinting that I'm not just Oliver Queen anymore. I just hope that guy managed to convince Darhk that I was just R'as al Ghul's patsy all along."

The table fell silent at that point. Felicity had been playing with her food for a while, and he felt a sudden regret that he hadn't ordered Chinese. He'd get her some hot and sour soup from her favourite Sichuan place later on. But it seemed she'd lost her appetite for other reasons.

"I went through some of the recent police reports, and Anatoly and Chien Na Wei weren't lying, or even exaggerating. I also saw the crime scene photos."

She shuddered, and Oliver wished he didn't have to ask her to do this. She continued, looking at her tablet for reference.

"A week ago, a client starts shooting in a Bratva run strip-club. Among the dead, three, um, exotic dancers and a waitress. Two days later, same thing, but in the kitchen of that restaurant you said was a front for the Triad. Every time something like this happens, people die. Not everyone in there was a gangster. And even so-"

Her eyes shone behind her glasses. Oliver understood.

"How are we going to connect all this with Darhk, though?"

Laurel was right – there was no way of linking all this with the guy himself, Oliver thought, and he said as much out loud.

"Actually, there is."

All eyes turned to Felicity again.

"If he's dumb enough to use the same guys for his legit business as well as his illegal stuff, then yes. When I finished looking into the gross shootings, I had some time to do some electronic investigation, if you know what I mean, and I think you do . . ."

No wonder she looked so punchy, Oliver thought angrily. She hadn't gotten any sleep at all. Felicity had lost him completely, what with talk of insider trading and buying stocks in bulk and under different company names and so on. Sure, he'd been CEO for a while, and had to know about that stuff, but he'd forgotten everything he'd once had drummed into him. Felicity had just started talking about a certain businessman who'd bought up Malcolm Merlyn's old office building, someone known by the name of Richard Damianos (oh, very clever, Darhk), when he couldn't hold it in anymore.

"Felicity, did you get _any_ sleep last night?"

Oh, lord, he shouldn't have done that. Valkyrie Felicity was back, and she wasn't taking any prisoners. She glared at him, and everyone suddenly thought of somewhere else to be, probably to get clear of the blast radius. The room was filled with a chorus of 'oh, look at the time' and 'damn, babysitter just texted,' at the same time as 'whoops, I promised dad I'd take in a meeting with him'. Once the chaos had died down and the room was empty except for the two of them, Felicity struck.

"No, Oliver, I did _not_ ," she spat, getting up and circling the table to where he sat. She was poking at him again, and he swallowed a wince when she unerringly hit the place with the burn mark. "Do you know why?"

He opened his mouth to answer, but she shut him up with a gesture.

"That was a rhetorical question, Oliver. You collapsed, in front of me. I thought you were dead. I started CPR, and all I could think about were all the studies which said that CPR hardly ever worked. Your eyes . . . they were just blank."

Her lips trembled, and she couldn't say anymore. He couldn't resist, though, and swooped in for a kiss, desperate to reassure her that he was alive, that they were both alive. She clung to him and kissed him back, sliding her hands under his sweater, pulling him to her. He moaned, suddenly tempted to sweep all the food cartons off the table and push her down on it. He pulled back, and she was flushed, having had the same idea, it seemed. And then she yawned, hugely, and immediately covered her mouth, embarrassed. He couldn't help laughing, and put his forehead against hers.

"Why do we have such terrible timing?"

"No, Oliver, it's ok. That was a horny yawn, not sleepy at all, really."

"Horny?"

"Oliver!"

"You're asleep on your feet, Felicity. Come on, you can sleep in Palmer's apartment."

He swept her up in his arms – hey, if they didn't get to have sex, at least he could carry her in a vaguely romantic way. He smirked down at her as she started to protest, and she blushed. He knew she was turned on by his strength, and he loved it when he turned her on, he had to admit.

She insisted on getting down as they went through the door, and practically collapsed on the bed, then she froze.

"Oliver, the only reason why I know where the bed is . . . "

She ran out of ideas at this point. He sat next to her and stroked her hair.

"Come on, sit up. You can't sleep with your hair all tangled up like this."

He loosened the rubber band and took it off, gently, and started untangling the strands of the braid she'd put it in hours (days?) ago.

"How do you know to do that?" she asked, and then she moaned. "Oh, God, Oliver. That's even better than sex. I mean . . . oh, I don't know what I mean," she sighed, as he massaged her head. He wasn't going to explain how he used to be the only one at home patient enough to untangle Thea's mane. He carded his fingers through Felicity's hair, making sure there were no knots or snarls left.

"Felicity, I know you slept with Ray."

"How? How do you know? Did he tell you? Was there . . . locker room talk about me?"

"No! Seriously, no! Come on, me? In a locker room?" She glared, and he got serious.

"The guilty looks you kept giving me when you wanted me to use the apartment, the way you practically jumped away from him whenever I walked into the room, it was pretty obvious."

She nodded.

"I don't have much of a poker face, it's true."

"And besides, as you'd be the first to tell me, we were on a break."

A slow smile surfaced on Felicity's face.

"Finally, some of me is rubbing off on you – I meant the Friends reference, not sex! Though of course, sex is good too, I most certainly won't fall asleep halfway through-"

She yawned again, even wider this time.

"Go. To. Sleep."

Her eyes were closing even before she hit the pillow. Oliver winced when he realised she was still fully dressed, but he wasn't going to take her clothes off - not when she was asleep. That would be . . . creepy. So he just took off her shoes and lifted her legs onto the bed, before covering her with a blanket. Then he sent her a text message telling her he was going to his sister's. He knew he had to spend some time there, if he didn't want to come home one day and find all his belongings in garbage bags on the sidewalk.

When Oliver woke up the next morning, he immediately sent text messages to the rest of the team (which he was never going to call Team Arrow, by the way), saying that they should meet, and asking for suggestions as to where. Was it a good idea to meet at Palmer Technologies in the daytime? Probably not, Felicity answered. Thea, who was nursing a large latte, which she'd already had to defend from him, suggested everyone should come to the loft, if Felicity could get all the tech she needed over. Felicity only wanted to know if she had Wi-Fi, and they were all on the way.

"Oliver will get us breakfast," Thea added pointedly, and Oliver raised his eyebrows. Thea answered with an eyebrow raise of her own, and an imperious hand gesture which ordered him to get going. When he came back, laden with bags full of coffees and doughnuts, everyone was already there. There were monitors, and keyboards, workstations, and a server, and Felicity presided over everything with her tablet. She looked much better than the last time he'd seen her - rested, and calmer. He realised that Thea was smirking at him, mouthing things like 'you loooove her', and he rolled his eyes, while secretly thinking that he'd missed this, being teased by his annoying little sister. He had a skeleton of a plan, and he'd said a few things to Felicity about it. Diggle wasn't here yet though. As soon as he thought it, the man himself came through the door, talking angrily on his mobile to someone. He hung up, and faced them.

"Guys, we have a problem. Can we get the news on . . . any of these monitors?" he continued, seemingly dazed by the loft, which was looking like a Best Buy having a going out of business sale.

Thea rolled her eyes and switched on the tv. The anchors were discussing a special evening at Damianos Enterprises during which the mayor and other business leaders in the city would come to some kind of an agreement about financial aid to get the city back on its feet. Oliver groaned. So that was why Darhk was pitting the Triads and the Bratva against each other. The only crime syndicate in Starling City was going to be his own.

"Please tell me he isn't going to try and rebrand the city too," Oliver groaned.

"I think once was enough," Laurel quipped, and then looked at Felicity through her eyelashes. "Sorry, I forgot that was your ex's idea."

Felicity mock glared, and pretended to aim a doughnut at her. Oliver tried to get them back on track.

"So, we have a ticking clock. Can we handle it?" He looked at all of them in turn, and they all seemed to be on target. He gave out assignments, leaving Felicity for the end. When he got to Laurel, he wondered aloud if it would be a good idea to give Captain Lance a heads up.

"I don't know, Ollie. On the one hand, I'm pretty sure the Chief of Police is going to be there along with the Mayor, at least for the party. Man likes his fancy dos, is all I'm saying. And dad isn't going to be happy if we all burst in on his boss like that. On the other-"

"Plausible deniability," Oliver said.

"Yeah, that."

"We'll deal with that when we're in the building," Oliver decided. He sat down next to Felicity, who was deep in code. He hesitated to interrupt her, but then she looked at him, and smiled. He was dazzled for a few seconds, forgetting what he'd wanted to say. She took the opportunity to explain what she'd been working on, at such a speed and in such detail, that he felt even more dazed than before. He realized he was tilting his head to the side, with the look that Sara'd always told him looked like a puppy faced with a quadratic equation, and straightened up, with a jerk. Felicity looked at him, fondly.

"You didn't get one thing I just said, did you?"

"No, not really," he answered.

"Look. All you need to know is when you say something like, 'Oracle, bring up those spreadsheets,'" she said, doing the Arrow voice again, "I'll run whatever program I need to show them something they can understand."

"Oracle?" he asked, putting as much doubt in his voice as he could.

"I thought we'd all have code names," she said, plaintively.

"Not Oracle," he answered.

"You're no fun," Felicity pouted. For a moment he forgot they weren't alone and wanted to launch himself at her, nibbling at her lower lip. She read his intention in his eyes and brightened, pouting a little more.

"Get a room, you guys!"

Laurel dashed by, bagel and coffee in hand, and smirked at them in passing. Oliver got up, sighing, and gave Felicity a regretful look, which she returned. He still had to get the last member of their team, and no-one was going to like it. Least of all him. But this was Merlyn's old building, and so they needed Merlyn. It didn't take him as long as he'd imagined to persuade the others – they seemed to be tired of all the bullshit and wanted it to go away. And, Felicity explained, they'd already roped in Merlyn once, before Nanda Parbat, so they'd already been accustomed to the idea.

They had a few days to plan the assault on the building, and Oliver kept a low profile for the entire time, unsure what message Darhk had been given about the warehouse, what his pet Russian had told him. He hoped he'd sold the idea that he was completely harmless, just Waller's tool, R'as al Ghul's patsy, Anatoly's pet. And possibly even dead, by now, thanks to Waller. The clashes between Triad and Bratva had died down, too. Oliver had the idea Darhk was preparing for some grand clash which would wipe out both organizations in Starling City once and for all. He didn't need Diggle to point out to him that might not be such a bad outcome, in the end. Except for one small fact - what would happen when the main branch of both crime syndicates lashed out for revenge? Once again, Starling City would become a war zone. And while Darkh built up his power base, people would die. No, he had to hope that taking Darkh out of the equation would stop this gang war. And neither the Triads, nor the Bratva would get any special concessions from him if they got in his way. So now, all they could do was wait, and plan the whole operation to the last detail. It would be enough, Oliver reassured himself. It had to be.

* * *

A few things about this chapter:

I tried to use the automatic defibrillator realistically, i.e. not as it was used on Arrow Season 1. You don't shock to start the heart, you shock to stop it when it's in fibrillation or tachycardia, so that it will then get into the right rhythm again. That is, if the line next to the heart is flat, then there's no need to shock. Game over, man.

On the other hand, I don't know if a person whose heart is in fibrillation can actually hear as much as the character does, but in this case, I'm using poetic license.

The word 'pidor' is a homophobic slur, in Russian.


	7. though much is taken, much abides

The outside of Merlyn's old building was a mass of cameras and reporters dressed in evening wear, as the movers and shakers rolled up to the party which would precede the meeting. The press weren't allowed inside the meeting itself, so they had to content themselves with a kind of red carpet event, though the sober businessmen and women arriving were hardly as exciting as the kind of celebrities attending movie premieres. Oliver was watching all this without sound, on a tablet rigged up and hacked into the security feeds in front of the building. He was hidden in one of the huge vents running through the building, and their size might have seemed weird at first, until Merlyn explained he had designed the building in such a way on purpose. He had also given them all the information about the secret entrances, false walls and areas of weakness where anyone could burst through in a dramatic fashion. You love that, don't you, Oliver thought sourly at the time.

The press outside the building were being cleared away by police, who then put barriers up some distance from the building, at first making sure that no tv cameras were recording. After long discussion they'd decided to tell Captain Lance that something big was going down after the gala. According to Laurel, he'd sighed tiredly, saying something to the effect that he'd had a bad feeling about Damianos from the start.

Oliver looked at his watch. Felicity and Diggle should be sneaking out of the restrooms where they'd hidden to wait out all the staff leaving at the end of the business day. Merlyn was using one of his secret entrances to make his way to the boardroom, while Thea and Laurel had snuck in with a cleaning staff who worked on the offices late at night. Thea had grumbled until Oliver had pointed out that it was much easier to hide weapons under a jumpsuit, and she could hide her jacket in a fake trashcan. And Felicity should be breaking into the servers and network right about now, he decided. On cue, there was her voice in his ear. Of course, it wasn't saying anything they'd agreed on.

"Breaker, breaker for the Green Arrow." She couldn't have sounded more bored if she tried.

He winced. She really didn't like her code name. And she'd thought of one for him that he wasn't sure he liked. Though the trucker jargon was new and unexpected.

"Control, what's your status?"

"Bored out of my skull," she answered sulkily, "but otherwise ready to rock and roll, sir!"

There was a strange sound on the shared comms, like several people trying to stifle their sniggering.

"Red Arrow, here, checking in." He'd given in to Thea, and she used her new vigilante name all the time. Though he was going to keep calling her Speedy at every opportunity.

There was a sigh on the comms. Diggle had protested against any and all code names, and had finally settled on the plainest, and, in Oliver's opinion, least covert of all.

"Soldier here, checking in."

"Black Canary, in position."

There was a pause of a few seconds. He always had to make an entrance, Oliver thought uncharitably.

"Al Saher, in position."

Felicity was the one who had to coordinate their attack, as she could see everything from the server room. By now all the remaining security guards should have been knocked out and deposited in one of two vans they'd be using for their getaway. The only people still in the building were the ones attending Damianos's meeting, and their bodyguards. And, Oliver thought, gritting his teeth, Team Arrow. Felicity's voice interrupted his worries about his team being in danger.

"Green Arrow, break through the ceiling in three . . .two . . . one."

He smashed through the weakened ceiling tiles, landing in a crouch in the boardroom of the repurposed office building. Time seemed to slow down as the others burst in from different entrances (Merlyn, of course, burst through a wall, never one to miss an opportunity to show off), quickly disabling and disarming the bodyguards, and throwing flechettes containing miniature projectors at the table, angled so that they would project the images Felicity sent. He rose to his full height, nocking an arrow with what he knew was impressive speed, and aimed it at the man sitting at the head of the table.

" _Richard Damianos. You have failed this city!_ "

So this was Damien Darhk. He'd seen him on tv, of course, and the man looked much the same. Prematurely white hair and piercing blue eyes, leading Felicity to wonder why he'd chosen a Greek-sounding alias. Oliver ignored the gasps and screams from the other people around the table. Felicity hurriedly recited their names, ending with the new mayor, a woman whose name sounded familiar. Too familiar. He realised to his horror that she'd been a friend of his mother's, and had been invited to many dinners with his family. Oh, great. Irving Weissmann, the senior partner of the law firm Felicity had sent to help him, was there too. Great, just great. Yes, Oliver was wearing a mask and a hood. Was it enough though? Damien Darhk hadn't said a word, just sat and smirked at him. That was fairly worrying, Oliver thought. Thankfully, the mayor took over.

"What is the meaning of this?"

If he had less control, Oliver would have winced. Yep, that was the woman he remembered, who never had time for any of his teenage bullshit.

"Mr Damianos is not one of your white collar criminals! How dare you attack us like this?"

Oliver did not clear his throat nervously, though he dearly wanted to.

"No one here is under attack, except for Richard. Damianos."

He paused deliberately, making sure Darhk heard the stress he was putting on the fake names.

Oliver started summing up the gang warfare Darhk had caused. Each time, Felicity brought up crime scene photos, which caused gasps, and in one case a security camera feed, which caught the exact moment when one of Darhk's goons started firing. He could see that they were going to ask what this had to do with their good friend Damianos, so he continued.

"In each case, the catalyst was traced back to this man," he continued, his arrow never wavering from its position pointed at Darhk's chest. The pictures started flashing up – a murderer in the morgue, then his file traced back to an obscure company owned by 'Damianos'. By the fifth one, someone'd had enough, and said as much, holding his hand up dramatically. Oliver knew this guy, too, even suspected him of taking part in the Undertaking in some way, but could never prove it.

"How is this anything to do with us, and our plan to revitalise the city?"

Oliver allowed himself a humourless smile, as different projections started climbing the walls – showing that all the businessmen and women in the room were being targeted for hostile takeovers, land was being bought from under their feet, they were being made bankrupt and powerless, and they didn't even know it. The only people who weren't targeted were Weissmann and the mayor – he hadn't known the lawyer was going to be there, and he was going to break the bad news to the mayor using anonymous tipoffs. Darhk had made it look like her electoral campaign had been financed by the Triads. Oliver was sure she didn't want that made public, even though it was all made up.

"I've seen enough."

It was Weissmann. Was this good or bad? Had he recognized Oliver's voice?

"Madame Mayor, I think this is our cue to get out of here."

Clever old coot, Oliver thought. The mayor wasn't completely buying it, though and wanted to stand her ground. Oliver tuned out the argument, as a horrifying thought started growing in his mind. Felicity seemed to have come to the same conclusion, because suddenly he heard a worried voice in his ear.

"Why isn't he saying anything? Uh, Green Arrow?"

He knew she'd almost said his name, which showed how worried she was. The man in question had not moved from his position at the head of the table. He was smirking slightly. Where had he seen that expression before? Oh yes, he remembered – that chamber in Nanda Parbat. He could still feel his breath burning in his lungs as he fought R'as al Ghul and smashed his sword out of his hand. The look of contempt in his eyes as Oliver realised he couldn't kill the guy. Oh, shit.

"Everybody except Mr Damianos needs to get out."

His mechanically amplified voice cut through the argument the mayor was having with Weissmannn. Everyone froze, including his sister and the rest of his team.

"I mean, _everyone_. "

Oliver allowed himself a flick of his eyes sideways to his team, and they got the message. They started chivvying the businessmen and women out, dragging the slightly woozy bodyguards along. Irving Weissmann and the mayor were the last to leave, the latter still protesting, as she aimed a contemptuous look at Oliver, which he felt in his toes.

"I suppose you're hoping for a five minute head start before we call the cops?"

Oliver winced, inwardly, as she made it clear that she would do no such thing. Darhk laughed, and shook his head.

"Oh, dear. I think five minutes is pushing it, don't you?"

It was the first thing he'd said all evening, and it confirmed what he'd started to suspect. Oliver hissed at Merlyn, who'd been the last of them to leave.

"Get her out of here!"

Then he turned to Darhk, who hadn't moved a muscle.

"What did you do?"

He tried to inject some of his rage into the question.

"Contingency plans, my dear boy. Or should I call you . . . Oliver?"

Was his identity a secret to anyone anymore?

"Congratulations! You've destroyed the work of five years in a few minutes. I'd be impressed if I wasn't so enraged. R'as al Ghul must be so proud of you."

"Careful, Oliver. He's just trying to piss you off."

Why was Felicity's voice still in his ear? Was she still in the building? She must have rigged his suit with a heart monitor of some kind, because her next words were reassuring, as if she noticed that his blood pressure had just spiked.

"We're out, Oliver, don't worry. We're in the vans, just waiting for you. Everyone's here, except for Merlyn."

He knew very well that Darhk was stalling.

"What. Did. You. Do?"

He repeated the question, louder this time. Darhk smirked even wider, and the huge plate glass windows at the end of the conference room shattered. A helicopter hovered at the level of their floor, and Darhk ran to the window, launching himself into the air towards a harness hanging from it. The last Oliver saw of him was the ever present smirk as he was airlifted out of Starling City. In the dazed moments when Oliver felt like the air turned into glue, he had the ridiculous thought that the guy didn't _look_ like he could move that fast. He managed to let fly a few arrows, but they missed, and he stood in the opening for a few moments more, wondering what he should do now. He hadn't expected it to go like this; that was clear. There was a sudden noise, and the building rocked slightly, followed by Digg's worried voice in his ear.

"Something just blew up on one of the lower floors, Oliver! Get out of there now!"

Oliver scanned the area frantically, and realised that the building opposite was yet another abandoned office block. He shot an arrow at the roof, and managed to launch himself out of the window and swing towards it, just as more explosions went off behind him. He managed to curl up as he crashed through the windows of the building he'd been aiming at, and rolled to a halt, hitting his shoulder painfully on the wall. That was when things turned weird. Weirder, Felicity would have said. The fact was, he couldn't move. He kept willing himself to uncurl and get up, but nothing happened. What was happening to him? Had Darhk gassed the room? But no, everyone else had been moving fine.

"Oliver! Oliver, are you ok?"

He felt like he was in a fog. He heard and felt everything at a distance – the building collapsing behind him as he jumped into the sky, the broken glass embedded in his jacket, Felicity's frantic voice in his ear. But he felt detached from all that. He just wanted to lie there for a while.

"I'm fine."

He managed to get the words out, and hoped she'd be satisfied with that, because that was all he had to offer. But apparently she wasn't. Digg tried too.

"Oliver, get up. You have to get up now."

How did they know he was lying down? He wanted to move, he really did. But everything seemed like an impossible effort.

"Oliver, get out of there! There's cops going through every floor on that building, you'll get arrested!"

Felicity sounded frantic, on the verge of tears. He was really sorry. But he couldn't move. He could hear the cops going from floor to floor, yelling "Clear!" as they went, but he couldn't bring himself to stir. It was too late now, anyway. Footsteps approached the entry to his floor, and a familiar voice interrupted his thoughts.

"The hell?" The voice became more hushed. "C'mon Queen, get up! You gotta get out of here!"

That was different – Lance didn't usually want him to get away. Heavy police boots appeared in his eye-line, and a hand reached down to grab his shoulder, and shake it. Oliver willed himself to get up, yelled at himself. Nothing. Lance bent down to speak into Oliver's throat mike.

"Whoever's there – I do NOT want to know. Just go home. I'll take care of it. But there'll be cops all over the streets, for hours. A building just collapsed, for Christ's sake. Just go home."

He heard Lance striding towards the entry to the stairwell, yelling "Clear!" as he went. There was some protesting, followed by Lance giving some poor rookie a dressing down. Better him than me, Oliver thought. He'd spent enough time on the sharp end of Lance's tongue. He wasn't sure of how much time passed before he started feeling ridiculous lying down, curled up on the floor. He sat up and started picking the glass out of his pants. His hood felt like it was suffocating him, and he pushed it off, taking the mask off too, and giving his face a good rubbing. He knew he should get up and walk out of there, but he still couldn't bring himself to do it. Footsteps sounded in the stairwell, and Lance came back through the door, carrying a big duffel bag, which he dropped by his side.

Lance studied him for a few seconds, and then carefully sat beside him, groaning theatrically.

"When you get to my age, sitting on the floor isn't an option anymore." He looked sideways at Oliver. "Not trying for secret identity anymore, I see."

Oliver shrugged.

"It's not like you didn't know."

Lance nodded. Oliver tried again to get up, but it was too much of an effort.

"What's happening to me?"

The frustration must have been apparent in his voice. Lance gave him an exasperated look.

"Do you even know what the word 'therapy' means, Queen?"

Oliver was on the verge of spluttering that he didn't need therapy, when it struck him how massively ironic the situation was.

"Wait a minute, you hate my guts! Why are you being . . . like this?"

Lance winced.

"After that case, it may have been brought to my attention that you could be very helpful if used right."

Which case did he – oh, of course. The human trafficking ring.

"What the hell happened to you anyway, after you were released? I mean, the first time. You disappeared, and then you turn up dressed like an assassin, and then you vanish again."

Oliver tried to hold everything back, to be noncommittal, but he was tired of this. He wanted to talk. If Lance really didn't want him arrested, then he was the only objective listener he could think of.

"R'as al Ghul-"

"The guy who told me about you? Who I then find turned my baby girl into a murderer?"

"Yeah, him." Oliver sighed.

Maybe confiding in Lance wasn't the best idea after all. But the man was looking at him expectantly. Oliver opened his mouth, and closed it again. What was the point, really? What good had secrets been in his life? He leaned back against the cracked concrete and thought. And then he started talking, and told Quentin Lance . . . everything. His voice became hoarse with talking, and a couple of times he heard an indrawn breath at his side, but he forged on, unwilling to leave anything unsaid. The only thing he left out was Merlyn's involvement in Sara's death, as well as how Thea had been used. He felt like he was vomiting poison out, trying to get clean again, and felt sorry that he had to put it all on Lance, who was, in spite of everything between them, a good man. He ended the story when R'as al Ghul died, trying to sound convincing when he said _he_ was the one who killed the man, but when he glanced at Lance, the expression on his face was sceptical.

It was strange. Oliver did feel better. Talking does work. Who knew, right? He cleared his throat, risking another quick glance at Lance, whose face was difficult to read. Was there sympathy there? It couldn't be, could it?

"So, is this when you bring out the cuffs?" Oliver was trying for a casual tone, but a look from the man at his side showed that it wasn't working.

"If I wanted to arrest you for being a vigilante, I kind of missed the boat when I hid you from my fellow officers. We call that aiding and abetting around here."

"No, not for . . ." Didn't he understand _anything_? "For rape."

The word resounded in the empty room. Oliver hardly dared raise his head to look at Lance, which was why the hand on his shoulder came as a shock. When he looked up, startled, and saw the compassion in Lance's eyes, he had to look away. He suddenly missed his father with a pain that was almost physical.

"You know I'm homicide, not sex crimes, but I'm pretty sure they don't arrest the victims," Lance answered mildly.

"How can you call me a victim?" Oliver's voice was getting louder, and he could hear it, but couldn't control himself, couldn't calm down.

"I did this! I . . . physically . . . "

Oliver couldn't go on. He realised he was shaking, and gripped his knees, trying to stop. He'd never described that night explicitly, not even to Felicity – especially not to Felicity – but he wished he could put it into words, the way he felt betrayed by his own body. How could he have done it? What was wrong with him?

Lance sighed, and leaned back. He seemed to be considering his words carefully before he started talking.

"I never considered working in sex crimes, you know? Sure, a big case means all hands on deck. But day to day, dealing with that all the time – nah. Never had the stomach for it. But my partner when we were beat cops, she joined that division. A couple years into it, she needs to talk out a case. Some kid in his twenties, smashing up his office, gets arrested. Talks to a detective, and this . . . shitstorm comes out. Office party, everyone's pretty happy, his female supervisor comes on to him, and tells him he's gonna fuck her. Right there. Or she'll scream, say he tried to rape her. Turns out she'd already been harassing him, he feels powerless, all that great stuff. So the kid does his best, thinks of his girlfriend, manages _something_ , but it eats at him, you know. Gets angry all the time, loses it at work, and we arrest _him_!"

Lance shook his head. Oliver was curious, despite himself.

"It all comes out in the interrogation – kid is lucky, he had an email in which she said he'd always be her bitch. So she gets fired for sexual harassment, and he gets to keep his job."

Oliver swallowed.

"Did he . . . press charges?"

"Nah. He didn't want to face a courtroom, and we didn't blame him for that. But it was still rape, Oliver, even though he had an erection. That's just physical – come on, Oliver. You know this."

Oliver was unwilling to concede the point, even though he knew Lance was right.

"I should have found another way. I should have taken Felicity and – "

And what, he thought. He hadn't seen another way out at the time. Lance seemed to be reading his thoughts.

"There was no other way, not at the time. Look, if they'd been holding a gun to her head to make you do it, would you still be blaming yourself?"

Oliver shook his head, still reluctant to accept what Lance was saying.

"When I saw that security video of you on the rooftop, fighting Nyssa, and yes, I recognised her, I'm not a moron . . . Anyway, I just thought, you know, finally! I can get him locked up!"

Oliver gave Lance a half-smile – this was the Lance he knew.

"But when it all fell apart, I watched the video again. And there was something wrong about the way you moved, the way you looked. And most of all, the way you just looked into the camera like a goddam amateur. For three years, all we had of the vigilante was an artist's impression which could have been any handsome bastard, and then you just give it up like that? So I believe you when you tell me about the brainwashing. And the guy you were then, he didn't see any other way out."

Lance looked at him, sternly, not finished with his lecture.

"And you have to accept that you were raped, too."

Oliver sighed, leaning back against the wall. It was a hard thing to acknowledge. A sudden beeping startled him out of his thoughts. Lance looked at his phone.

"Huh. That's weird."

Oliver looked at him, worried, but he'd already called whoever texted him, and Oliver couldn't get much out of the one-sided conversation.

"So, lay it out for me again . . . uh huh . . . ok. _What_ did it say on the note? I see. Do you need me to come in? Ok, then. Keep me posted."

Lance looked at Oliver, speculatively.

"So get this. That alley where we usually have our chats – patrolman goes out for a smoke and finds it full of pimps and madams chained together. All known to us, all working for the Triads. At the same time, the _front_ desk gets a flood of sex workers, many of them offering to testify that they were being held against their will."

He looked at another text message on his phone and spoke through gritted teeth.

"Some of them are . . . really young."

Oliver didn't know what to say, so he said nothing. Was this Chien Na Wei? What was her game?

"One of the pimps had a note pinned to his shirt. It said, "To the Arrow, with thanks".

Oliver buried his face in his hands and groaned.

"Oh, fuck me."

Lance raised an eyebrow, and folded his arms, expectantly.

" _Oliver Queen_ was asked to look into this gang war that's been going on between the Triads and the Bratva. I found out it was Damianos behind it all, as well as other crap that's been going down."

"So? What am I not getting- oh, shit."

Lance finally understood.

"Whoever it was, and please don't tell me, knows. About . . . this."

He waved his hands up and down to encompass the suit and weaponry. Oliver nodded. He sighed, and started getting up.

"One consolation is that if Ch- if this person keeps messing with the Triads like that, she or he won't live for very long."

He caught Lance's raised eyebrow.

"This isn't a good person, Captain."

Lance looked away, and nodded. Then he brightened, levering himself off the floor with a groan. He opened the duffel bag he'd brought with him, and took out an SCPD patrolman's uniform, complete with peaked cap.

"Pretty sure this is your size," Lance said. "Get changed – you never know who's watching, and if anyone asks, I needed to talk down a rookie."

Oliver stared at Lance, on the verge of asking him who he was and what he'd done with Quentin Lance, president of the Oliver Queen Hatred Organisation. Lance rolled his eyes and shoved the uniform at him. He took off his suit and weapons quickly, and Lance turned away, but not before he caught a glimpse of his back.

"Jesus tapdancing Christ!"

Oliver glanced behind him. Lance wasn't looking at the brand, but at the place where R'as al Ghul's sword had come out.

"How the hell did you survive that? And on your shoulder, is that a . . . that's a fucking brand!"

Oliver shrugged.

"Courtesy of R'as al Ghul."

Lance shook his head.

"Have I ever said how glad I am that maniac is dead? So tired of goddam assassins, messing with my city."

Oliver smiled as he pulled the t-shirt on and put the patrolman's shirt on top of it. They had something in common at least – they were both possessive over Starling. Once he'd changed into the full uniform, and packed the suit and his weapons into the duffle bag, they headed out. It was still dark outside, though the sun would be coming up soon. Lance drove him to the loft in an unmarked police car, and Oliver texted Diggle that he was ok, not wanting to phone, for fear of waking up the baby. Sitting in the car in front on the loft, Oliver hesitated. He wasn't sure how Lance wanted to play this. He came to a decision, and turned to Lance, who was staring straight ahead. He didn't want to make Lance regret his kindness.

"Thank you . . . I . . ."

Lance looked embarrassed, and waved him off.

"Just make sure I get that uniform back as soon as possible. Give it to Laurel." He hesitated, seeming to choose his words carefully. "You know you really need some kind of therapy. Yeah, yeah – this sounds strange coming from a cop, and if you tell Laurel I said this, I'll come after _you_."

Lance pointed at him, glaring, and Oliver tried to suppress a smile, while promising this would be their secret. Lance sagged in his seat, and continued.

"I've seen too many cops messed up by the job, marriages wrecked, all that crap. I was headed that way myself, crawling into a bottle every night. I'm sober now, but the meetings are what keep me that way. I know there isn't a support group for traumatised vigilantes, but maybe if you find a counsellor you can trust, it would help."

Oliver agreed, and got out of the car, yawning, and Lance sped away. When he let himself into the loft, he was surprised to find the lights on, and Thea asleep on the couch. He didn't want to wake her, but the way she was lying couldn't be comfortable. After hesitating, he shook her shoulder gently, and she opened her eyes, at first squinting at the light, then wide in shock.

"Ollie? Why are you dressed like a cop?"

Oliver looked down at himself, surprised. He'd forgotten he was still wearing the uniform.

"It's a long story. But I'm ok." She looked at him, still half-asleep. "I'm sorry I made you worry about me."

Thea launched herself at him in one of those hug offensives she hadn't done since she was a little girl, and he hugged her back in reflex. He wanted to say something, and instead had to yawn, and she giggled.

"I'm going to sleep all day, Ollie – and so should you."

She walked to the stairs as he sat heavily on the couch.

"First I have to phone Felicity."

She laughed again.

"You are in so much trouble, there. Good luck!"

Oliver agreed that Felicity was going to be livid. Maybe she'd fallen asleep, and he wouldn't be yelled at tonight. As soon as he dialled, she answered – so, not asleep.

"Oliver? Are you in jail? Is this your phone call? No, wait, it's your mobile. Should I call a lawyer? All the lawyers?"

"Felicity, breathe!" Oliver should have known she'd be worried, more than angry. "I'm at the loft, everything's ok."

She was silent for a few seconds.

"But Lance . . . a few months ago he wanted you in prison. What . . . what did he do?"

"He, um, told the other cops the building was empty. Then he came back, and, uh, listened. While I told him . . . everything."

Even as he said it, he realised how crazy it sounded. There was a pause. Then Felicity spoke cautiously.

"Oliver – did you by any chance see any strange pods lying around?"

Oliver couldn't help laughing.

"He also lent me a police uniform as a disguise."

"That's it, pod person. They're here already. You're next."

Oliver couldn't stop smiling – what was it about her, that she always managed to cheer him up? Oh, wait. Love, right?

"Are you ok, though?" Felicity sounded like she didn't know how to broach his meltdown.

"Talking about everything helped. It just caught me at the wrong time, that's all."

Felicity sighed. He bet she wanted to give him a lecture about mental health, and how it needed to be worked at, and so on. But she didn't say anything, waiting for him to come out with it. And he was grateful.

"I know I need . . . to talk more."

He heard her huff of exasperation over the phone.

"Understatement of the year, Oliver."

He smiled again, wanting nothing more than to beg her to come over, but it wasn't the right time.

"See you tonight, at the," he closed his eyes and grimaced, "Arrow cave?"

"Ha ha, we got you, right?" Felicity crowed. Actually, he just loved hearing her like this, and if it made her happy, he'd call their HQ whatever she wanted, even though it made no sense, on any level.

"Yes, you got me," he said, grinning.

"I'm taking the day off, and so are you," Felicity continued. "No training, no workout, just sleep. I've set my phone to alert for three very specific things," she added, yawning.

"Oh?"

"Natural disaster; Skynet attacks, and I mean old skool Skynet, not reboot Skynet that can't spell; and your own personal favourite-"

"Felicity-"

"Zombie apocalypse!"

Oliver sighed.

"You're never going to let me forget about that, are you?"

She was smiling, he could hear it in her voice.

"Just remember," she whispered theatrically, "remove the head, or destroy the brain!"

He tried to suppress his own grin but couldn't. He was so exhausted, he wished he could just sleep there on the couch, but he had to take the uniform off first. Felicity was still talking.

"Hey, we should watch Shaun of the Dead together! Have you seen it already? No wait, bad idea. We'll watch Hot Fuzz instead, even better. For the greater gooooood," she giggled.

She babbled even more when she was tired, he realized, or maybe it was the relief that they'd succeeded, and Darhk, if not dead or in prison, at least wasn't their problem anymore.

"Did you fall asleep?" she asked, after a long, one-sided discussion about how Edgar Wright, whoever that was, should have been kept on to direct some movie about ants. That couldn't be right, could it?

"Oliver?"

"Still here, Felicity."

"I kind of got lost in the babble, there."

"I like it," he said, quietly. He could practically feel her smiling at the other end of the line.

He said good night, and he knew she was biting her tongue not to point out that it was already morning, but she managed to stop herself in time. He looked at the phone for a few seconds, and then got himself out of the couch by force of will alone. They hadn't talked about their relationship and where it was going, but surely that could wait until the evening, or even the next day. Now that they had a reprieve from all the craziness that usually dogged them, they could really focus on each other. 


	8. Epilogue: blithe and bonny

It had been a week since they took down Damien Darhk - fine, so they ran him out of town, but at least he was someone else's problem now. Oliver felt that he had enough to deal with, considering the assholes who attacked his city on a regular basis. Case in point, while he'd been patrolling with Thea earlier that evening, he'd been conscious of their being followed. He hadn't mentioned anything to his sister, not wanting to worry her. Though the tiny voice in his head which was Felicity at her most perceptive pointed out that he was probably just saving it for a brotherly lecture about being aware of one's surroundings at all times. He wasn't going to deny it. Perks of being an older brother.

He had a pretty good idea who it was, though. Especially after they split up, and whoever it was kept following Thea to the loft. Oliver landed on the roof, and Malcolm Merlyn turned to face him, taking off his hood and cowl with a dramatic gesture.

"What can I do for you, Oliver?"

"You can stop following us around, for one thing," Oliver answered, unable to keep the exasperated tone out of his voice. "We're probably the only two people who don't want to kill you, right now."

Malcolm looked hurt. "What, even after the part I played in taking down Damien Darhk?"

Oliver rolled his eyes.

"Showing us how to get into your old office building wasn't rocket science. A custodian could have done it."

Malcolm smirked. Oliver swore. How did this guy always manage to get a reaction from him?

"I heard the Triads and the Bratva are your best friends now. Not very appropriate for the protector of Starling City, I would have thought."

Oliver rolled his eyes. Merlyn was probably pissed off he hadn't become the new R'as al Ghul, even though he'd denied wanting the title when Oliver had challenged him about it. He didn't know how things were between Merlyn and Nyssa, and he didn't care. His new resolution was to keep out of League politics, and if Merlyn wanted to stay alive, he'd do the same.

"I don't need to justify myself to you, Merlyn."

It was enough for him that the crime syndicates wouldn't tear the city apart between them. Neither Anatoly nor Chien Na Wei were going to get any concessions from him, even in light of their so called favours. He didn't consider them particularly impressive. You don't get extra credit for stopping human trafficking, Oliver thought. That just made you a human being, rather than a monster.

"Who are you talking to?"

His earbud came to life with a crackle, and he almost jumped. Felicity sounded pissed.

"Is that Malcolm Merlyn?"

He almost nodded, then answered with a simple yes. Malcolm grinned wider.

"Please give my regards to Ms Smoak."

Oliver sighed. Luckily, Felicity interrupted anything he was going to say to Malcolm, and he took the opportunity to make a dramatic exit of his own.

"Oliver, I have an address for you – then you're done. Everyone else went home already."

She gave him an address in the suburbs that SCPD had been watching for a while, according to her. He was a bit puzzled though. The suburbs, not exactly a hotbed of criminality. He was about to make a quip about criminal baking, or murderous soccer moms, but restrained himself. Felicity had been looking at him with barely restrained impatience for the past week now, and he knew he was expected to make a move, but he wasn't sure how, anymore. What was he supposed to say? Invitations to dinner had resulted in disaster in the past, and he could hardly say 'let's fuck', could he?

"Oliver! Are you still there? Did you get that address?"

He winced.

"Doesn't seem like a center for crime."

"Are you doubting my intel? And yes, I just said 'intel'. Deal with it."

He smiled. God, he loved her.

"No, no," he hurriedly reassured her. "Do I have to disable the security system?"

"Nope. I have the code. I mean, I, er, hacked into the network."

That was strange. Usually she'd ramble about triple DES and RC4 encryption systems until his head swam. That was almost curt, for Felicity.

"I'll get on to it, Felicity. Is there somewhere I can put the bike? Not a lot of high rooftops there."

"Oh, there's plenty of parking in the area . . . I saw it. On the traffic cams?"

Felicity was starting to sound weird. But he wasn't going to doubt her again – this was her area. He signed off and walked towards the Ducati. He was just getting on, when an alarm sounded – dammit, it was a small bank branch nearby. It was a matter of minutes to get there, subdue the robbers, tie them up, and avoid the police, who were already on their way, and who obviously tried to arrest _him_. It took him an hour to lose them and he had plenty of time to muse about what Felicity called his counseling session with Lance. He'd raised an eyebrow at that, at first. But it was true, unburdening himself to Lance had helped a lot. And maybe he could continue working at it. What harm would it do to check out Carrie Cutter's psychologist? Maybe she'd meant what she'd said – she'd certainly been right about him.

Oliver finally lost the cops on the edge of the industrial district, and was tempted to call Felicity and tell her he'd get to the suspicious suburbanites another day, but if she was asleep, he'd be waking her up. And he'd promised her he'd see to it. He stretched, feeling the joints in his back popping. He needed a good workout. Almost immediately, he had a flash of Felicity with her legs wrapped around his waist, and gritted his teeth. Not _that_ kind of workout, he told his brain. He headed towards the suburbs. The sooner he did this, the sooner he got home, got some sleep.

It was a mid-sized apartment block, with a small parking lot attached. Oliver didn't see anything suspicious – he couldn't see anyone awake, for that matter. He wheeled the bike into the parking lot, in a shadowy corner, and got out his tarp, covering it quickly. The main door was opened by buzzer in the apartments – it was a simple matter to bypass the circuit, open it, and shut it again behind him. Once he reached the apartment, he was going to use his universal key, when he realised the door wasn't locked. This was getting stranger by the minute. Was it a trap? The alarm started flashing, and he entered the code hurriedly, locking the door behind him.

The apartment was almost dull in its normality – there was no meth-manufacturing equipment littered around, no bags of cocaine or heroin stacked on every possible surface. There was a lot of tech lying about, though. There were disassembled computer parts, a tablet with a cracked screen, circuit boards, a soldering iron . . . Maybe it was some kind of cybercrime happening here.

A sound from a nearby room made him nock an arrow – he'd been wrong when he thought the entire apartment was dark and silent. He lowered the arrow when he realised that what he'd heard was a movie. The dialogue was clear for a few seconds.

 _. . . Mr. Frodo . . . I can't carry it for you! But I can carry you!_

Then a cheerful voice came out of the bedroom.

"If that's not the Arrow, I have a gun!"

" _Felicity?_ "

Oliver walked into the room, feeling like he was in a dream. She was sitting on her bed, bathed in light, looking more beautiful than he'd ever seen her. Her hair was down, and she was only wearing some kind of silky nightdress which barely reached her thighs. He wondered what that colour was called – burgundy, his mind helpfully supplied, while the rest of him felt like he was on fire. She leaned back, and stretched out her legs in a pose which was meant to arouse (and it did, his mind gibbered, it really did). She batted her eyelashes at him and that broke the spell – he couldn't hold back a laugh, and she smiled in relief.

"Oh thank god, I thought you were going to blow a fuse."

"Felicity," he said, while trying to say something that wasn't just her name, repeated. "I don't understand . . . "

"Why don't you lose all the weaponry, Oliver? I'll explain everything."

He'd started taking all his flechettes off before she even finished speaking – next went his quiver, and the bow had already been tossed to the side. He sat down and took his boots off – he had knives hidden in both of them. Then he sat, undecided. Should he put them on again? Was he being presumptuous? He heard a giggle behind him and she draped herself over his back, pulling his hood down and his mask off. She kissed his neck and slid her hands around to unzip his jacket.

"Maybe you don't need an explanation, huh?"

He turned around and she was kneeling up on the bed. He kissed her, taking the jacket off and throwing it in the corner at the same time. He slid his hands up under her nightdress, when he suddenly realised he still had the gloves on, and took them off impatiently, then he hesitated and pulled back. She looked flushed, her lips swollen with kisses, her chest heaving. He suddenly couldn't resist and pulled down one of the straps – he latched onto one perfect rosy-tipped breast and she cried out as he gently licked and nipped at her. She pulled down the other strap and he could bury his face in her breasts licking and nibbling until her nipples were hard and she was whimpering happily.

"Frat boy," she said above his head, laughing. "It's all about the boobs with you!"

"Not all about the boobs," he said, marvelling that he could still form sentences.

"Oh?" she said smiling, then "oh!" again, as he kissed his way down her belly, before lifting her easily further up the bed, so he could make himself comfortable between her thighs. He kissed her inner thighs happily, and went unerringly for her pussy, parting her folds with his tongue, licking over her clit. She cried out, louder, and grabbed onto his head. He delved into her with his tongue, alternating between lapping at her clit and sucking on it. Her cries were wilder and her thighs were shaking, and he couldn't resist helping with his fingers a little, getting them nice and wet, and then sliding into her as he tapped her clit with his tongue. He'd always been good at this, he thought smugly, as she shook and came, her thighs pressing against his ears as she quaked. He had to press down hard on his cock to stop from coming himself, and wondered why he hadn't taken off his pants yet.

"Why are your pants still on?" Felicity complained, and he had to laugh. He smiled at her, wiping his mouth, and she blushed.

"I was distracted," he said, grinning. She sat up, still flushed and dazed, but managed to pull her nightdress off over her head, and he was transfixed by her boobs again. She giggled and pulled on his waistband, opening and unzipping his pants and pushing them down to his thighs. He was rock hard, and he didn't miss her eyes widening slightly as she took him in. He'd always been slightly smug that he was, well, hung. And she hadn't minded in Nanda Parbat, he thought, but they hadn't really looked at each other then. But she'd seemed a bit apprehensive in the bathroom, he remembered.

"Hey."

She looked at him, nervously.

"We can do . . . other things. If you're not sure."

Her eyes narrowed.

"I'm plenty sure, Oliver. Plenty. Now get those pants off." His cock twitched, and she couldn't hold back a giggle. "Hmm. You like it when I order you around."

His lips twitched in a smile. She was right. He really did. He pulled his pants and underwear off impatiently, and knelt in front of her on the bed. Now he was the nervous one.

"I don't want to hurt you."

She rolled her eyes, and grabbed his hand, pulling it between her legs. She was so wet, his cock jumped this time.

"You're not going to hurt me, Oliver. I want you, badly."

She slid his fingers into her until they were soaked with her, and he was shaking. She lowered herself on her back, and pulled him down, spreading and lifting her legs so that they curled around his ass. He just had a second to wonder if she should be on top before she grabbed his cock and guided it in her, and his instinct took over and he slid deep into her, not stopping until he was all the way in. He rested on his elbows and gritted his teeth, trying to stop from coming.

"Hey."

She was smiling at him, and he couldn't help smiling back.

"I love you," he whispered, and he kissed her, nuzzling her neck.

"And I love you," she answered. He started moving inside her, slowly and then speeding up as her cries grew louder, nonsense with his name in it, she begged him to go harder, faster and he did, raising her leg over his shoulder so he could go deeper, hitting her clit with every stroke. He could feel her hands on his back, as she shook and came again, her inner muscles working on his cock as he desperately tried to hold off. She came down, shuddering, and her eyes widened as she realised he was still hard inside her. He lifted her off her back with one arm and rose up on his knees, staying inside her the whole time, until she was in his lap, her knees bracketing his hips.

"Oliver," she moaned, dazed, as he put her arms round his neck.

"Hold on to me tight," he answered, and she squeaked as he started moving her slowly on his cock until she continued the rhythm herself, riding him, her head falling back as her whole body flushed with pleasure. She came again, and he couldn't hold back either as the tension spiked in his balls and he came, groaning her name. She rested on his chest, breathing heavily, and he collapsed backwards, pulling her with him. She smirked at him.

"Hold on to me tight, huh," she said, raising an eyebrow. He lifted his head and smiled. She punched him, playfully.

"You made me feel like it was an unrequited crush, you jerk."

He caught her fist and kissed it, opening up her hand, and kissing the palm, and fingers, one by one. He'd been so messed up that first year back, he didn't know what he'd been thinking. He remembered occasions when it suddenly occurred to him that Felicity was becoming more than a friend, and also remembered relentlessly squashing those thoughts.

"Do you remember when Helena came after you?" he said, and she looked at him, puzzled.

"I don't think I'll ever forget, Oliver," she said. "It's one of those memories that stays with you."

"I wanted to kill her. I tried to kill her."

It was suddenly important to him that she understood him, and he sat up suddenly, pulling her with him. He looked deep into her eyes.

"I don't mean I threatened her, or I said something like 'next time, you're dead'. I mean I aimed an arrow at her and shot it. I didn't know she'd been training to catch arrows for a while. It's the one time I regretted not using a gun."

She raised an eyebrow at him.

"She _hurt_ you, Felicity."

Felicity smiled, her eyes a bit shiny, and stroked his face.

"That early, huh?"

He wrapped his arms around her and crushed her to him.

"I tried to fight it for so long. I don't deserve you – ow," he yelped, as she pinched his side. "Didn't deserve you, I mean, didn't," he said hurriedly, as she glared at him.

"That's right, I'm a pincher! Anytime you say something stupid like that, beware!" She put up her thumb and forefinger in a pincer movement and he laughed, moving forward, pretending to bite them, and going in for a nibble.

"Oh, I know you're a biter, Oliver. Look what you've done to my poor boobs."

"Oh, I'm looking," he said, as he gently kissed all the little red marks he'd left all over her breasts. He couldn't resist licking her nipple and watching it stiffen again, and he loved hearing her gasp above his head. She pushed him down, playfully, and he pretended to collapse on the bed, exhausted.

"So, how long have you been planning this?" he asked. He was also curious as to when she'd moved here, but then he answered his own question, and was glad he hadn't asked that one.

"Ever since I thought you might start avoiding me again," she said, and he smiled ruefully.

"Though I thought that hot sex in the bathroom would have solved part of that problem."

"Yeah. About that," he said. "We never really talked about it."

They were lying side by side, and he was playing with her hair, and occasionally stroking her thighs. He just couldn't keep his hands off her.

"What's to talk about, Oliver? We both needed it."

"Both?"

She looked at him, worried. He continued.

"When I was thinking about it, on the plane, I mean . . . I thought it was, you know . . . like a hearty meal for the condemned man, or something like that."

"Oliver!"

She sounded shocked.

"I wanted it too – we needed to have something, both of us." She thought a bit, then seemed to come to a decision.

"The time in Nanda Parbat was wonderful – romantic, and beautiful, you know? But then . . . "

Her eyes glistened, and he knew what she was thinking about. "He took that from us," she said, controlling herself. "I wanted us to have something that was ours." Her tone turned wicked. "And I thought if I banged your brains out you wouldn't notice that I was planning to come along."

She smirked at him and kissed him, simultaneously pulling his hips against hers. He moaned into her mouth and grabbed her ass, hard again, and she pulled away, giving him one last small kiss, and pushing him on his back. She kissed her way down his chest, and when she reached his cock, gave him a wicked look before licking her way up the shaft and teasing the crown with her tongue. He moaned, helplessly. He couldn't remember the last time anyone had given him a blowjob, but he didn't want her to feel obligated.

"Felicity . . . you don't have to . . ."

She pulled off his cock, her mouth glistening, and he groaned, his head falling back.

"Oh, but I want to. Maybe you can consider it a late birthday present. "

The way she stressed the last phrase burst through his sex-fogged brain. That had sounded sharper than usual. And she was holding his cock. Though she'd let go, and was looking at him accusingly now.

"I haven't celebrated my birthday in –"

"Eight years! I know, Oliver. I can't believe I had to look it up on the internet."

Oliver winced.

"You could have asked Thea . . . or Laurel?" he said, with some hesitation. Felicity rolled her eyes.

"Yes. Sure. Your sister, who didn't even know we were together, at first. Or your ex. Whatever." She waved her hands around in a 'change of subject' gesture. "That's not important, really, unlike _this_ birthday. Old man." She giggled at his outraged look.

He lunged at her, ready to tickle her into submission, and she shrieked, trying to get away. A few deep kisses later, they came up for air.

"Thirty isn't old," he said, trying for a huffy tone.

"Of course not, Oliver."

She looked at him, wide-eyed, but there was a wicked twinkle in her eyes. She climbed into his lap, and squirmed a bit, making herself comfortable, then whispered in his ear.

"Do you think you can manage a second time? I wouldn't want to tire you out."

"Ok, that's it. It's tickling time," he said sternly.

"Wouldn't you rather get that birthday present you missed out on this year?"

She kept eye-contact as she lowered her head into his lap, and licked her way up his cock again, and it stiffened with almost comical speed. He groaned and leaned back on his hands, watching her as she teased the crown with her tongue, and then gentle nibbles of her lips. She stopped teasing, and started sucking for real, her head bobbing up and down in his lap, and he wanted so badly to tangle his hands in her hair, but was unsure if she liked that. Almost as if she'd read his thoughts she looked up at him, smiling cheekily.

"You can grab my hair if you like."

His cock twitched and drooled, and she slid her lips back over it, swallowing a little. His hand fell on her head and he watched the blond strands slipping through his fingers as her head rose and fell in his lap, as he felt himself fall towards orgasm. He wanted to warn her, to stop her, but all he could do was cry out and shudder as he came in her mouth. She lifted her head, looking very pleased with herself, and he pulled her up for a deep kiss, tasting himself in her mouth. She was laughing as they kissed, and when he pulled away, she was still smiling. He looked at her, questioning.

"I was just thinking. We could have been doing this, for so long, Oliver! What were we thinking?"

"I don't think I was thinking at all, Felicity."

She shook her head, trying to indicate that it hadn't just been his fault, even though it clearly was. But her eyes were already closing, and she pulled him down next to her. He lay on his back, and she cuddled up to him, her head on his chest. He played with her hair as he dropped off.

The sound of falling water woke him up. For a second he thought he was on the island again. The rains had started and he was in for some time of being cold and wet. Or not, he thought, as he opened his eyes to an unfamiliar bedroom. As he looked around and saw his weapons and his clothes scattered around, he remembered the previous night. He realised that the water was a shower. And the sound of singing came from the shower too. He wasn't sure he'd heard the lyric right, though.

" _Bitch better have my money?_ "

"All hail Queen Rihanna," Felicity said happily, coming out of the shower with a towel wrapped around her. He tried to reach for her, and she danced away.

"Shower first, Oliver. And brush your teeth. The blue toothbrush is yours. I, um, bought it. For you."

She looked at him, worried that she was jumping the gun, moving too fast. He just smiled.

"Thank you." He tried to grab her again, and she squeaked and dodged his hands.

"I'll get breakfast ready!"

She'd done more than buy him a toothbrush – she had his favourite brands of shampoo and shower gel in the bathroom too. As well as shaving foam and razors. His mouth twitched in a smile. Felicity thought of everything. Once he'd finished, he found a towel laid out for him, and wrapped it around his waist, wandering out to the kitchen, following the smell of coffee. As soon as he rounded the corner a bagel sailed towards him and he caught it out of the air. Felicity was leaning over the table, spreading cream cheese on another bagel, and he immediately lost interest in food. The towel was slipping and she kept trying to pull it up – at the top of one breast she'd managed to spread cream cheese on herself. He swallowed.

"You've got some cream cheese on you," he said. He swallowed again, and she looked at him, eyes wicked.

"Oh?"

Felicity turned towards him, slowly, opening the towel.

"Why don't you help me with that," she murmured, and he didn't need to be told twice, as he licked the smear away, and continued to her nipple, licking and sucking until it was pebbled. He turned to the other, and she gasped. She pulled away his towel, and grasped his cock firmly, jerking him a few times. He pulled back, and she spread her legs for him, and he slid in, marvelling how wet she was, how ready. He lifted her onto the table, and she wrapped her legs round his ass, and they moved together, slowly this time. He stroked her breasts and she kissed his chest and his neck, gasping as he bottomed out inside her. When she came, it was like a wave of pleasure transformed her face, lit it up from within. He followed her, feeling like he was coming home. They leaned against each other, and he stroked her back, wishing he would just stay like this.

She was looking over his shoulder at the kitchen clock, though, and she pulled back.

"We have to get dressed, Oliver – we'll be late. Not that there's anything to be late for, really. We're just going for a walk downtown, and will spontaneously do . . . stuff. This is not, and I stress _not_ , a date."

Oliver looked at her quizzically. He looked at the clock – it was about one in the afternoon, and he could hardly believe it. It had been ages since he'd slept so long. She noticed his puzzlement and continued.

"We kind of have bad luck with dates, Oliver. So if nothing's really planned, we can outrun bad luck. Or bad guys. Whatever," she said impatiently. "Come on, get dressed."

"All I have here is the Arrow suit, Felicity. And this towel," he said, raising an eyebrow.

She snuck a look at him and smiled.

"That would be a great look! But actually . . ."

She pulled him back to her bedroom and opened one of her drawers, and he could hardly believe it. There were a couple of shirts and sweaters, jeans, even socks and underwear. He had to look away and blink a couple of times, and when he could finally face Felicity, he noticed her eyes were shiny too.

"Thea helped – and she said you wouldn't notice your clothes vanishing suddenly. And she was right," Felicity said as she rolled her eyes. "Men."

Oliver was still looking at his clothes.

"So, Thea was in on the plan?"

"Not all the plan – just the parts which involved her brother getting his head out of his ass." She raised her eyebrows, waiting for a rebuttal, but fair's fair, Oliver thought. He wasn't going to argue with the truth.

An hour later, they were strolling along the theater district. Oliver was sure Felicity had something planned, no matter what she said. They'd found some amazing food carts on the way, and had gone with Lebanese Asian fusion for lunch. And then Felicity had surreptitiously looked at her watch and dragged him towards one of the oldest movie theaters in the city. He had to laugh when he looked at the marquee, which trumpeted 'Starling City Shakespeare Movie Festival' to the world. Felicity smiled at him, and pulled him inside.

"Don't worry, I'm not gonna make you sit through Hamlet. It's depressing, and Branagh's version is four hours long! No, we just have to choose between war and blood in France, or food and sex in Italy . . ."

They exchanged looks, and Oliver could already see that they were of one mind – they'd had enough war and blood to last several lifetimes. Felicity raced off to buy tickets, though not before Oliver wondered out loud how come she hadn't bought them online already.

"Spontaneity, Oliver! Spontaneity is _key_!"

He looked at the poster while he waited. _Much Ado About Nothing_? What did that even mean? And wait, Keanu Reeves was in this movie? Felicity was back from the ticket office and smirked when she saw him reading the cast list.

"I see doubt in your eyes, young padawan. All will be revealed in due time."

"What does the title mean, though?" he asked, as they sat down. "It's about nothing?"

Felicity shrugged.

"It's pretty ambiguous," she said. "Though, if it makes you feel better, 'nothing' is Elizabethan slang for _pussay_!"

She whispered the last word in his ear, and he felt the tips of his ears getting red. She giggled, always happy to make him blush. The house lights dimmed, and the screen went black. When the words started appearing on the screen, Oliver was intrigued. And then, when he turned to Felicity to ask her what 'hey nonny nonny' meant anyway, he was entranced. She was mouthing along with the words, her face glowing, and he smiled, turning back to the screen, which had changed to a beautiful Italian countryside gathering, bathed in warm light.

"Isn't that lovely?" Felicity asked, and she turned to find him looking at her again.

"Yes," he answered, and this time it was her turn to blush. She put her head on his shoulder, and he settled back to watch the movie, which was turning out to be not at all what he'd pictured when thinking Shakespeare. There was a strange feeling inside him, one which he hadn't felt in so long. It came to him like a wave crashing over him, this feeling of joy. As Felicity settled into his side, as he thought of his friends and family, safe and sound, even if just for that afternoon, he let himself drift into this rare emotion, this feeling of happiness.


End file.
